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Admin Mon 20 Jul 2015, 9:35 pm

Hamas Sending Fighters to Yemen?
Israel Daily News Stream9 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Hamas is rebuilding its tunnel infrastructure and rocket stockpiles with material smuggled into Gaza from Israel.
Israel?
According to the Times of Israel, Hamas is taking advantage of dual-use materials brought by trucks through the Kerem Shalom crossing and a network of West Bank and Gaza merchants. Tunnel excavators find refrigerator motors and wooden pallets useful. Electrodes needed for rockets have been found hidden in butter containers. And don’t get me started on the rocket fuel . . .
The discoveries gave rise to a debate in Israel’s defense establishment: What to do? Do we stop the transfer of goods into Gaza in order to strike at Hamas’s ability to manufacture arms for use against Israel — an act that would increase the hardship in Gaza and increase the risk of a conflict? Or do we continue allowing products to flow into Gaza, with the understanding that there will be a military price to pay?
gaza tunnel
Hamas tunnel
2. Has Hamas agreed to send hundreds of men to Yemen to join the fight against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels? Is Iran spreading disinformation to disrupt thawing Hamas-Saudi ties? Whatever the case, the Jerusalem Post reports:
According to the Iranian news agency, the Saudi monarch, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, asked Mashaal to dispatch 700 Hamas fighters to Yemen to help in the fighting against the Houthis. The report also claimed that Mashaal asked the Saudis for $20m. in monthly aid to Hamas to enable it to continue managing the affairs of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Gilad Shalit3. Israeli security officials have learned that the mastermind of last month’s terror attack near Shilo (25-year old Malachi Rosenfeld was killed in the drive by shooting) was a Hamas operative released from prison in the 2011 Gilad Shalit swap. According to Haaretz:
According to the Shin Bet security service, the person behind the terrorist cell that murdered Rosenfeld and wounded three other civilians, and also perpetrated two other shooting attacks in the Ramallah area, is Ahmed Najar. Najar is a Hamas operative who served eight years in an Israeli jail for involvement in the murder of six other Israelis before being freed in the Shalit deal. Under the terms of that deal, he was deported to Gaza rather than being allowed to return to the West Bank, but he later left Gaza for Jordan.
Overall, six Israelis have been killed by Palestinians freed in the 2014 Shalit swap. Meanwhile, Yoav Limor is disturbed that Najar was able to orchestrate the attack from Jordan. Is Amman turning a blind eye to Hamas activity on its soil?
4. Trumping Israel’s Security Barrier: The Washington Post dragged Israel into a debate sparked by Donald Trump. What could go wrong?
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Financial Times (click via Google News) updates the latest incremental news from the EU’s efforts to label settlement products.
• Two main Israeli power grids providing 25 percent of Gaza’s electricity broke down because of a technical error. On a related note, Egypt recently raised the price of electricity to Gaza as part of Cairo’s effort to reduce subsidies.
• Truly bizarre: In a report about David Cameron’s plans to fight Islamic extremism in the UK, Sky News turned to Asghar Bukhari. He’s best known for an epic social media meltdown when he ranted on YouTube about the Mossad stealing his shoe last month. (The shoe turned up, prompting a second rant.)
Bukhari’s entitled to his opinions, but what does it say about Sky News that they treat someone like this as a credible talking head? Bukhari appears at the 1:52 point — presumably in a nice pair of Clarks. I found this video on the Voice of America’s YouTube channel.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• The UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the Iran deal today. Israel’s alleged “mistreatment of Palestinians” was also on the UNSC’s agenda. The European Union gave the deal its official endorsement today — as expected.
• Nuclear deal will see US and West actually help Iran protect its nuclear facilities from
Article 10 of the deal, included in a section titled “Reactors, Fuels, Facilities, and Processes,” stipulates that world powers and Iran will foster “cooperation through training and workshops to strengthen Iran’s ability to protect against, and respond to, nuclear security threats, including sabotage, as well as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems.” . . .

The U.S. has to protect Iran as it pursues nuclear weapons because its program is allegedly civilian?” the official wondered.
• Reuters: Visting Tehran, Germany’s vice chancellor urged the mullahs to improve Iran’s ties with Israel, and offered Germany’s services to mediate.
“Questioning this state’s (Israel’s) right to existence is something that we Germans cannot accept,” he said, adding that now Berlin and Tehran can re-establish closer ties it was necessary to talk about human rights.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed the Iran deal and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s visit with ABC News.
I guess the question is, if this deal is supposed to make Israel and our Arab neighbors safer, why should we be compensated with anything?
ABC US News | World News
• Former IAEA official Olli Heinonen discussed the nuclear accord’s verification issues with Deutsche Welle.
Mideast Matters
• The Washington Post has bad news for Bashar Assad. He’s begun to lose the Druze.
Recently, however, the Druze have been defying Assad’s government. Many are refusing compulsory military service. Increasingly, Druze spiritual leaders are criticizing the embattled president and urging their community to adopt a neutral stance in the conflict . . .

But analysts say the Druze population’s changing attitude is significant because religious minorities have formed an important part of Assad’s base, with many of their members serving in the military and government-run paramilitary groups.
• Despite being blacklisted by the EU, Hezbollah continues to operate in Europe. The Daily Beast takes a closer look.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Shelley Berkley: Surrender on Iran nuclear deal makes U.S. less secure
– Jackson Diehl: Obama, Iran, and the limits of engagement
– Abdulrahman Al-Rashed: Thwarting Iran’s regional influence
– Ray Takeyh: On Iran, Congress should just say no
– Mary Anastasia O’Grady: A richer Iran will double-down in South America (click via Google News)
Iran
– Austin Long: If you really want to bomb Iran, take the deal
– Abraham Ben-Zvi: Obama’s rationale implodes
– Smadar Perry: Iran deal will save Assad
– Chuck Freilich: A good deal for Israel
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Stylianos Mystakidis with additions by HonestReporting; Gaza tunnel via YouTube/Vice News;

Admin Sun 19 Jul 2015, 10:04 pm

Israel and ICC on Collision Course Over Mavi Marmara Affair
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. The International Criminal Court ordered chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to consider opening a full investigation of alleged IDF war crimes during the Mavi Marmara affair. According to the Jerusalem Post:
The decision puts the ICC the closest it has ever been to intervening directly in the Israeli-Arab conflict and places the court in the position of potentially being harsher on Israel than Bensouda, who herself has been criticized by Israel for recognizing a State of Palestine . . .

Bensouda very well may close the file again, but the court’s order means there is a very serious chance Israelis will face a full criminal investigation – something that has not yet occurred even regarding the 2014 Gaza war, Operation Protective Edge.
According to law professor Avi Bell, the ICC has “declared war” on Israel, while Elliott Abrams says the court “has degraded itself to the condition of the UN Human Rights Council and other UN bodies.”
2. Gaza was rocked by a series of car bombs this morning targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad figures. Islamic State graffiti was found at the scene of one of the attacks. Jerusalem Post coverage.
Nervana Mahmoud
3. They didn’t necessarily bury any hatchets, but a meeting between Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Saudi King Salman certainly suggests a thaw in years of hostility and mistrust. Are the Saudis trying to pull Hamas out of Iran’s orbit? According to the Daily Telegraph:
It is thought to be highest level get-together between the two sides since the outbreak of the Arab Spring in early 2011, which plunged the Middle East into extended upheaval, and appeared to be motivated on the Saudi side by a desire to weaken Iran by luring Hamas away from its influence.
Jonathan Spyer
Dr. Jonathan Spyer
4. Join HonestReporting for an exclusive briefing with Dr. Jonathan Spyer, director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs, at the IDC, Herzliya.
He’ll be discussing the war in Iraq and Syria and its significance for Israel and the Mideast region.
– Where: Agron Guest House, 6 Agron Street, Jerusalem
– When: Thursday, July 23; 7.00 p.m. prompt (doors open 6:15 p.m.)
– Advance registration required. Click here to book your tickets.
– Cost to offset expenses: 50 NIS per person (prepayment required).
– For more info, email: hrmission@honestreporting.com
5. Daily Telegraph Places Al-Aqsa Mosque in “Jerusalem, Palestine”: But geography isn’t the only thing that the Telegraph is confused about.
6. HR Radio: What Part of “Death to Israel” Is Confusing? In his latest Voice of Israel interview, Yarden Frankl takes on the BBC’s assertion that Iran no longer threatens Israel and asks why the New York Times is acting like a cheerleader for the nuclear deal. Click on the image below to listen.
VOI-vintageRadio+NewsLogos-770x400(1)
Israel and the Palestinians
• I wonder how much Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez was influenced by media coverage of the Gaza war.
Tennessee shooter was upset over Gaza war
• The UK ended a partial arms embargo on Israel, placed amid concerns that British-made components in radar systems and tanks — among other things — might be used against Gaza civilians. The license exports could be suspended again in the event of another war. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• Hamas plot to attack Israel, PA in West Bank foiled by mass arrests
• A recent ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court concerning Israeli-controlled territories adds a new and surprising twist. Holland can extradite Rabbi Eliezer Berland to Israel, even though his crimes occurred in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. In fighting extradition, Rabbi Berland argued that international law didn’t recognize Israeli jurisdiction over those areas. Eugene Kontorovich‘s reaction is worth reading.
• After the Knesset shot down a bill proposing the death penalty for terrorists, Jerusalem Post reporter Lahav Harkov called out The Indepedent‘s Lizzie Dearden.
Lahav Harkov
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• At a celebration marking the end of Ramadan, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made his first public remarks on the nuclear accords. Here’s how the Times of Israel best summarized it:
Nine things Khamenei hates about you
• US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is due to visit Israel today to assuage Israeli concerns about the Iran deal. Some media reports indicate that Carter won’t necessarily be offering military equipment but rather “military exercises, arms stockpiles and regional troop presence.”
• Iran bans US inspectors from nuclear sites: Only inspectors from countries which have normal relations with Iran will be allowed in.
The revelation of this caveat has attracted concern from some analysts who maintain that only American experts can be trusted to verify that Iran is not cheating on the deal and operating clandestine nuclear facilities.
• Reporter Jon Karl of ABC News sparred with White House spokesman Josh Earnest over the president’s claim that “99 percent of the world” supports the accord.

Mideast Matters
• According to The Algemeiner, US is “seriously” considering Jonathan Pollard this year. But Pollard’s lawyers told the Times of Israel they have received no indication of this.
• Mideast news reports indicate Hezbollah arrested 175 of its own men for refusing to fight in Syria. Pass the popcorn: the fighting in Zabadani isn’t going well.
. . . the hesitation began after 120 Hezbollah fighters were killed in confrontations with opposition groups and another 200 were wounded.
• South African official threatens to probe students for visiting Israel
• Prominent Russian Jewish activist shot in Moscow; Sergey Ustinov, a 62-year-old businessman and Russian Jewish Congress board member is in critical but stable condition. Community leaders believe the attack was anti-Semitic.
• Hitler salutes and anti-Semitic slogans at football match in Belgium
Commentary/Analysis
Isaac Herzog
Isaac Herzog
• Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog is very much against the Iran deal. Jeffrey Goldberg weighs in on the Herzog factor. “Buji” is now a militant. Militant?
Herzog’s militancy on the subject of the deal places the Obama administration in an uneasy position. While the administration can—and has—dismissed Netanyahu as a hysteric, the eminently reasonable Herzog, who is Secretary of State John Kerry’s dream of an Israeli peace-process partner, will find receptive ears among Democrats for his criticism. Herzog’s critique of the deal also places American Jewish organizations in a curious dilemma. It will be fraught for liberal Jewish organizations to endorse the Vienna agreement if both the right-wing government in Jerusalem, and its center-left opposition, are so vehemently opposed to it . . .

Herzog would not tell me when he’s arriving in Washington to launch his non-lobbying lobbying campaign, but I expect he will arrive soon, and I expect that he will find himself the target of a great deal of lobbying as well; from the administration’s perspective, Netanyahu is a permanent adversary, but Herzog is a respected friend—one who could do damage to the administration’s cause on Capitol Hill, if he so chooses.
nyt thumb• Here’s another New York Times staff-ed cheerleading for the Iran deal:
While Iran supports Shiite allies and other militants in the region, the threat it poses to Sunni Arabs and Israel militarily, especially if the deal deprives it of a nuclear weapon, is exaggerated. The Sunni countries together spend about $130 billion a year on defense while Iran’s military budget is about $15 billion. Israel, the region’s most capable military power, spends about $16 billion plus $3 billion from America, and has a nuclear weapon.
Meanwhile, NYT columnist Roger Cohen misrepresents Israel’s desire to avoid war. Cohen also claims the agreement’s critics have offered no alternatives, but David Horovitz noted three. Here’s Cohen:
So what do the critics, from Republican presidential hopefuls to the Israeli government, seek in place of the deal with Iran that verifiably blocks Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon for at least the next 10 to 15 years? Presumably, they want what would have happened if negotiations had collapsed. That would be renewed war talk as an unconstrained Iran installs sophisticated centrifuges, its stockpile of enriched uranium grows, Russia and China abandon the sanctions regime, moderates in Iran like Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are sidelined, and a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic draws closer.
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend:
– Paul Berman: The Iran deal and a Cold War flashback
– Danielle Pletka: 8 unplanned results of the Iran deal
– Emily Landau: A deal with gaping failures
– Jeff Jacoby: Iran deal not worthy of Nobel recognition
– Prince Bandar Bin Sultan: Why the Iran accord is worse than the North Korea deal
– Charles Krauthammer: A deal worse than we could’ve imagined
– Robert Satloff: If the Iran deal fails . . .
– Trudy Rubin: Will deal allow Iran to cause more Mideast trouble?
– James Rubin: When the Iran deal tastes this good we can live with the smell
Michael Ramirez
– National Post: Netanyahu’s warnings apt on Iran (staff-ed)
– Dror Eydar: History’s sense of humor
– Nahum Barnea: Bibi bets against Obama in Congress battle against accord
– Emanuele Ottolenghi: Obama’s one aim: making friends with the mullahs
– Norman Bailey: The West held all the aces – and lost
– Amir Taheri: Is Iran now under the tutelage of the six world powers?
– Jonathan Schanzer: It just got easier for Iran to fund terror
– Alan Dershowitz: US gave away better options on Iran
– Alan Kuperman: The Iran deal is built on a lie
• Last but not least:
Hamas is set to win a seat at the UN table
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Daniel Hoherd with additions by HonestReporting; Spyer via YouTube/AIJACvideo; Herzog via YouTube/Tovah Lazaroff

Admin Thu 16 Jul 2015, 10:06 pm

http://honestreporting.com/idns-07162015-white-house/
Iran Accords: The Aftermath
Israel Daily News Stream7 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. The scrutiny and spin games continue as White House sells Iran deal. See below for all the news and commentary.
Edward Snowden
2. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, Israeli special forces were responsible for the 2008 assassination of Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman.
“We’ve had access to Israeli military communications for some time,” said one of the former U.S. intelligence officers . . .

Brig. Gen. Suleiman was a top military and intelligence adviser to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and was suspected of being behind the Syrian government’s efforts to facilitate Iran’s provision of arms and military training to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. Suleiman was also reported to have been in charge of the security and construction of Syria’s Al Kibar nuclear facility, which Israel destroyed in a 2007 air attack. The NSA document described part of Suleiman’s responsibilities as “sensitive military issues.”
3. Israel and Hamas discussing deal for Gaza captives
The sources confirmed Hamas’s recent statement to the effect that Mengistu, who crossed the border in September, is in Hamas captivity but is nevertheless safe and sound. The organization’s new stance on Mengistu contrasts with its previous version, according to which the Israeli man had crossed into Egypt via a tunnel. Hamas officials, however, refused to comment on the matter during a conversation with The Times of Israel.
4. The Real Crisis of Zionism: Must Zionism – the ideology that asserts the Jewish right to a state in Israel – be avoided when speaking to people about Israel?
Israel and the Palestinians
• An Israeli air strike hit “terrorist infrastructure” in Gaza after Palestinians fired a rocket last night. The rocket landed in an open area near Ashkelon causing no damage.
• If you want to understand where this development is coming from, I suggest you see coverage of Tzipi Hotovely’s inaugural speech to Foreign Ministry employees (and Jeff Jacoby‘s take). The Western Wall’s going to become a de rigeuer visit for visiting world leaders.
Gregg Carlstrom
• Jerusalem Post: Diplomats from the Quartet (US, Russia, EU and UN) met in Amman to discuss “how to create conditions that will enable the parties to return to meaningful negotiations.”
• Qalandiya refugee camp: A ‘chaotic base for terror’
• Why are Palestinians quitting their medical studies in Venezuela? AP did some digging:
But the students who dropped out complain that their first year consisted only of Spanish language lessons and indoctrination about Venezuela’s 16-year-old socialist revolution. They say they were surprised when their teachers presented a curriculum centered on community health and worried when doctors from other institutions warned that their education wouldn’t meet international standards.
• At the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza, Holland’s Foreign Minister inaugurated a new security scanner expected to boost the number of trucks bringing materials to the strip. Dutch and Israeli officials told the Associated Press that 1,000 trucks will be able to cross daily, up from the current 600.
• Though Gaza needs to reconstruct homes, Turkey’s to build a 20,000 seat stadium named after President Erdogan.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Likud and Labor leaders are quietly “discussing” a national unity government. At the moment, according to Haaretz, President Reuven Rivlin has been acting as a go-between for several weeks. All the rest is rumors and politics . . .
• According to the New York Times, the White House wants to boost military aid packages to Israel as a consolation. But Bibi’s not biting,
. . . one aide suggested in a phone call to Jewish and pro-Israel groups that Mr. Netanyahu had rebuffed their overtures because he believes accepting them now would be tantamount to blessing the nuclear deal, say people involved in the call who did not want to be quoted by name in describing it.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post elaborates on the defense benefits likely to be discussed when US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter visits Israel next week.
• White House adviser Ben Rhodes told CNN the US never sought “anytime, anywhere access” to Iranian sites. More at the Times of Israel.

• The US is already circulating a draft Security Council resolution endorsing the Iran deal. Getting UN approval for the accord before Congress finishes debating it is a heckuva way to engineer a fait accompli, as Foreign Policy points out.
Under the terms of a U.S. law passed this year, lawmakers can prevent the president from lifting congressional sanctions on Iran, which would blow up the landmark nuclear deal.

However, if a resolution is approved by the Security Council early next week, any president, Democrat or Republican, would be legally bound to enforce its terms.
• Netanyahu and Hammond spar over Iran nuclear deal at joint press conference
• Turns out the nuclear accord contains no reference to the Parchin facility and places no restrictions on the Bushehr facility.
• President Obama held a press conference to answer questions about the deal. Here’s the full video and transcript.
• Israeli officials continued speaking out against the accord. Prime Minister Netanyahu appeared on NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and National Public Radio. Cabinet minister Naftali Bennett appeared on BBC. And Bibi’s point man on Iran, Yuval Steinitz briefed reporters.

Commentary/Analysis
• It’s bad enough the US bungled the nuclear negotiations. Now, President Obama and British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond and London are “are now compounding their failure by peddling a false narrative about Israel.” But, as David Horovitz lays out, it’s all based on the false assumption that A) Israel wanted war, and B) there was no better agreement to be had.
To see ourselves being misrepresented and unjustly criticized by disingenuous leaders as this tragedy plays out, as we in Israel brace to battle against the repercussions of their insistent incompetence, is a contemptible case of adding insult to looming injury.
• According to Eli Lake, the accords amount to a US exit strategy from the Mideast.
Maybe the real benefit, at least from Obama’s perspective, is that the nuclear deal will pave the way for America’s full exit from the Middle East. After more than a decade of war and nation-building, the region is less stable and more dangerous than it was on 9/11. The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart, who supports the deal, says what its critics are really doing is “blaming Obama for the fact that the United States is not omnipotent.” Perhaps we have reached the limits of what American leadership can do in that part of the world.

But if that’s true, Obama should have the decency to level with us about it. This deal is not an affirmation of American leadership. It’s a recognition of American exhaustion.
• Unleashed economic forces will make Iran deal unenforceable:
Iran provides Western Europe and China with an alternative to Russian natural gas.

Boeing, French oil company Total and German industry group BDI see vast opportunities in the Iran market, and the surge of European, Chinese and American investment into Iran will be reminiscent of the Gold Rush that created modern California.

Once those euros, yuan and dollars are in, political pressures will make it tough to re-impose western economic sanctions.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ari Shavit: Five reasons to worry about the Iran deal
– Efraim Inbar: Six strikes against the nuclear deal
– Mordechai Kedar: The end of an era
– Toby Greene: What does Iran want with all that enriched uranium?
– Max Boot: The dawn of Iranian empire
– William Tobey: The nuclear inspection charade (via Google News)
– Con Coughlin: Accord grants amnesty to world’s leading terrorist mastermind
– Aaron David Miller: Is Obama building a case for the Iran deal, or undermining it?
Obama
– Matthew Kroenig: Obama abandons 70 Years of nonproliferation policy
– Ariel Ben Solomon: Iran deal to see Middle East conflicts go on steroids
– Zvi Barel: Time for US to pamper the Saudis
– Gershon Baskin: A bad agreement is better than no agreement
– Elliott Abrams: Iran got a better deal than it had a right to expect
– Peter Beinart: Face it, US and Israel don’t have same interests
– Uzi Even: Relax, Israel can live with Iran deal
– Doyle McManus: Don’t like the Iran deal? What’s the alternative?
– Leslie Gelb: The real reason Obama did the Iran deal
• Staff-eds include the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News), The Spectator, New Statesman,and Sydney Morning Herald.

Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Chris Yarzab with additions by HonestReporting; Snowden CC BY Wikimedia Commons/Laura Poitras/Praxis Films; Obama via YouTube/PBS NewsHour;

Admin Wed 15 Jul 2015, 7:11 pm

Big Media Responds to the Iran Nuke Deal
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago
.Today’s Top Stories
1. Big Media responds to the Iran deal. See below for all the news and commentary.
2. Are secret Israel-PA contacts and calming measures cooling down the West Bank? According to the Times of Israel:
Palestinian measures have included halting, for the time being, applications to join UN agencies and other international bodies as part of the Palestinian statehood drive.

Israeli authorities have slowed down construction in West Bank settlements and have increased permits for West Bank Palestinians to pray at the Temple Mount over the Ramadan holy month in a bid to show real will to improve ties.
3. After years of disenfranchisement, Sinai Bedouins are more actively help the Egyptian army fight Islamic State. According to Reuters, the jihadis brutally crossed tribal red lines.
4. Jerusalem’s Old City is not “endangered.” Please add your name to HonestReporting’s letter demanding CNN report accurately about the holy city.
The Iran Deal: Just The News
• What do you need to know about the deal? Take your pick of summaries of the fine print by AP, CNN, the Jerusalem Post and Daily Telegraph (one and two). If you have the stamina, read the full 159-page agreement.
• The Daily Telegraph notably summarizes what the agreement doesn’t cover — human rights, Western prisoners, Syria, funding for Hezbollah or Hamas, or personal freedoms.
Olli Heinonen
• Hmmmm. According to AP, opposition leader Isaac Herzog is flying to Washington to discuss Israel’s objections. More at the Times of Israel.
• President Obama asserted that inspectors will get access any suspicious location anytime, anywhere. Is that what the accord says? Not exactly, found CBS News.
And former IAEA official Olli Heinonen discussed monitoring with Foreign Policy. Iran buying time to cover up problematic sites is one part of the issue.
While Heinonen said it might seem reasonable to have to justify the need for an inspection, foreign intelligence agencies supplying the atomic energy agency with evidence of a breach in the agreement might not be willing to disclose that intelligence to the Iranians.
• The UN Security Council is expected to vote next week on endorsing the agreement.
• International reactions: The New York Times picked up on Benyamin Netanayhu’s criticisms.
• Notably, Canada to keep sanctions against Iran in place despite nuclear deal.
• If you like playing envoyspotting in Israel, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond is flying in today. And US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter will visit next week.
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius accepted an invitation to visit Iran. And Britain’s talking about reopening its embassy in Tehran by the end of the year.
• AP, the Washington Post and New York Times rounded up Arab reactions.
• Worth reading: The Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) examines the Arab world’s options. Which states will play along with Washington, and at what point might a Sunni nuclear deterrent emerge?
• Reuters wonders if a a Nobel Peace Prize for Iran is in the offing . . .
• There’s no breakthrough in the deal for Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter on trial in Tehran on espionage charges.
The Iran Deal: The Scrutiny and Spin
• President Obama wasted no time selling the agreement in an interview with his favorite New York Times columnist, Tom Friedman. Read Friedman’s write up or watch the full interview.
47 min VIDEO What Obama says the Nuclear Deal Means.
• Former Iranian negotiator Hossein Mousavian got Daily Telegraph op-ed soapbox to plug the agreement.
• It’s hard to see Israel preventing the agreement from getting ratified. Too many players want this agreement, and Israel activists will have an uphill fight in Congress. That’s the general assessment of AP, Dan Ephron, and Ron Kampeas.
• Israeli officials continued speaking out in press. Ambassador Ron Dermer got op-ed space in the Washington Post and appeared on CNN. Michael Herzog (a retired IDF officer and brother of opposition leader Isaac Herzog) weighed in at The Guardian. And Mark Regev appeared on CNN. Here’s Dermer:
3.55 min VIDEO
• Once sanctions are lifted, it’ll be harder for Israel to legally justify a preemptive strike on Iran. Yonah Bob explains why:
As long as UN sanctions are in place, the legal record of Iran’s history at violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of UN resolutions and actions framing Iran as a violator and of the failure of those actions to stop Iran’s push for the bomb are still the narrative.
• Mitch Ginsburg and Ron Ben-Yishai remind everyone that Israel’s military option still exists.
• Here’s what else I’m reading about the Iran deal . . .
– David Horovitz: 16 reasons Iranian nuke deal is a Western catastrophe
– Dennis Ross: Iran deal leaves US with tough questions
– Nicholas Burns: US must now act to contain Iran (click via Google News)
– David Ignatius: Will Iran behave?
– Raphael Ahren: Weak inspections regime is nuclear deal’s Achilles’ heel
– Con Coughlin: Peace in our time? Not with this shoddy deal
– Yaakov Amidror: Deal makes Iran stronger
Jodi Rudoren
– Haviv Rettig Gur: Deal gives Iran bomb and bombast
– Ilene Prusher: Obama’s changing lexicon of Iran inspections
– Zalman Shoval: Post-agreement politics
– Avi Issacharoff: The day Obama awarded Iran hegemony in the Mideast
– Tal Shalev: For Bibi, the deal is just the beginning
– Benjamin Weinthal: Iran will cheat and get away with it
– Clifford May: The deal of the century
– Alan Dershowitz: Does this deal prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?
– Michael Gerson: Obama’s Iran deal is a reckless bet
– Bret Stephens discussed the deal and what happens next in this WSJ video.
3.49 min Video IRAN DEAL WHAT COMES NEXT

– Elie Barnavi: The best imperfect accord
– Peter Baker: Obama a peacemaker or appeaser?
– Orly Azoulay: The agreement of the brave
– Marc Lynch: Can the Iran deal be a new Camp David?
– David Sanger: Obama’s leap of faith on Iran
– Roger Boyes: This cheater’s charter has saved Iran’s skin
– Robert Satloff: Dangerous gaps after major concessions
– Morton Klein: The Iranian nuclear deal is surrender.
• Former US officials James Woolsey, Dennis Ross, Sandy Berger and retired Gen. Michael Hayden discussed the deal with PBS NewsHour.
13min VIDEO WILL THE IRAN nuclear agreement WORK?
• Staff-eds weighed in on the agreement as well. The New York Times gave it a thumbs up, while the Washington Post and Daily Telegraph were more sober. The Times of London called it a weak deal and reckless gamble. And the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) was surprisingly thorough and authoritatively detailed in its criticisms.
See more staff-eds in The Independent, New York Daily News, Financial Times (click via Google News), New York Post, Miami Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Globe & Mail, Boston Globe, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Toronto Star, Philadelphia Inquirer,
Israel and the Palestinians
• An Israeli soldier was stabbed by a 15-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank community of Nahliel. The soldier’s injuries were light-to-moderate, and the girl was immediately apprehended.
Avi Mayer
• A Palestinian engineer got a 21-year jail sentence for helping Hamas boost the range of its Qassam rockets.
• Israel arrested a Palestinian suspect in last month’s murder of Danny Gonen.
• Israel’s natural gas sparks Russia’s interest
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Ed Yourdon with additions by HonestReporting; Heinonen via YouTube/Council on Foreign Relations

Admin Tue 14 Jul 2015, 8:27 pm

BBC Shocker: ‘Iran Not a Threat to Israel’
Featured Media Critiques6 hours ago
With the announcement of the Iranian nuclear deal, there’s plenty of media coverage including Israel’s reaction. BBC Newshour on BBC World Service radio interviewed Israel’s Minister of Science, Technology and Space, Danny Danon.
Danon stated that Israel was “keeping all options on the table.” The presenter asked Danon to explain. Her reaction is both shocking and disturbing (click on the image below to listen):
But you’re not under threat by Iran. Nobody in Iran has threatened you for a very long time. You’re harking back to a time when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatened Israel directly.

Just what reality is the BBC presenter living in? Only a few days ago, on July 10, Iran observed “Al-Quds Day” as reported in The Times of Israel:
Millions of Iranians took part in anti-Israel and anti-US rallies across Iran on Friday, chanting “Down with America” and “Death to Israel” on Al-Quds Day, internationally observed annually on the last Friday of the month of Ramadan.

The controversial holiday was proclaimed in 1979 by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a religious duty for all Muslims to rally in solidarity against Israel and for the “liberation” of Jerusalem. Tehran says the occasion is meant to express support for Palestinians and emphasize the importance of Jerusalem for Muslims….

Some protesters in Tehran burned Israeli and American flags. Posters showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi King Salman and US President Barack Obama in flames.
And only a few days before Al-Quds Day a prominent Iranian leader threatened Israel with destruction:
“The presence of the Israeli regime is temporary,” Iranian Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told the Hezbollah-linked Al Ahd news website. “Eventually one day this alien forged existence that has been forced into the body of an ancient nation and an historical region will be wiped off the map.”
In November last year, Ayatollah Khameini tweeted why and how Israel should be eliminated:
And what about Iran’s support for terrorist proxies that threaten Israel such as Hezbollah and Hamas, which is only likely to increase now that billions of dollars will be available to the Iranian regime as a result of sanctions relief from the nuclear deal.
The BBC’s interview with Danny Danon demonstrates a breathtaking ignorance concerning Iranian intentions towards Israel.
If this is a sign of how the BBC intends to cover the Iranian nuclear deal, then we can expect Israel’s legitimate concerns to be met with the usual BBC hostility towards Israel.
You can register your complaint with the BBC through its online complaints form, selecting World Service Radio in reference to Newshour on July 14.

Admin Tue 14 Jul 2015, 8:21 pm

Israel Condemns Iran Deal
Israel Daily News Stream5 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. International diplomats reached a nuclear agreement with Iran which Israel opposes. See below for a roundup of what’s been disclosed and dissected. The spin games kicked off too. See HonestReporting’s critique: BBC Shocker: “Iran Not a Threat to Israel”.
Gregg Carlstrom
2. According to Egyptian media reports, several Turkish intelligence operatives in the Sinai were caught while actively helping Islamic State jihadists. The JCPA’s Jacques Neriah assesses the significance.
3. The Whitewash Continues: BBC Trust Refuses to Review Tim Willcox Appeal: Is a “senior editorial adviser” preventing the 12 members of the trust from examining Tim Willcox’s inappropriate reporting?
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• What’s known about the nuclear deal? See key provisions at the New York Times. The biggest stink may regard monitoring Iranian military sites. YNet writes:
According to diplomatic sources, the deal includes a compromise between Washington and Tehran that would allow UN inspectors to press for visits to Iranian military sites as part of their monitoring duties.

But access at will to any site would not necessarily be granted and even if so, could be delayed, a condition that critics of the deal are sure to seize on as possibly giving Tehran time to cover any sign of non-compliance with its commitments.
Anshel Pfeffer
• Haaretz explains the agreement’s mechanism for snapping back sanctions, should Iran be suspected of cheating.
The 65-day sanction restoration process will work as follows: If a state suspects that Iran has violated the agreement, it will be able to file its complaint with an arbitration board comprising members of the six world powers, the European Union and Iran itself. The committee will have 30 days to decide whether to bring the complaint to the UN Security Council. In that case, the Security Council will have 30 days to vote on whether to restore sanctions, and has the option of extending the deliberations by five days. The Security Council decision will have to be approved by a regular majority, and no countries will have veto right on the matter.
David Rothkopf
• The White House web site posted its selling points.
• What’s on Russian minds? Out with it, Sergei Lavrov:
Russia says arms deliveries to Iran possible if approved by UN
• Bashar Assad and Hezbollah are happy campers . . .
• Israeli officials speaking out against the deal included Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, cabinet minister Naftali Bennett (on CNN), MKs Michael Oren (Time) and Yair Lapid (Huffington Post), and ambassadors Ron Dermer and Ron Prosor.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu launched a new Twitter feed in Farsi to reach out to the Iranian public. According to YNet:
Netanyahu’s office said it has not decided whether to interact with politicians on the new Twitter feed.
• For early commentary/analysis on the deal see:
– Aaron David Miller: 5 things to watch for in wake of Iran nuclear deal
– Raphael Ahren: With Iran deal in the bag, what’s Israel to do now?
– Bret Stephens: The best arguments for an Iran deal (via Google News)
– Amos Yadlin: Nuclear-hungry Iran is pulling the wool over our eyes
– Herb Keinon: Israeli military option hasn’t vanished
Fr Gabriel Naddaf
– Jeffrey Goldberg: The single most important question to ask about the Iran deal
– Tom Wilson: Deal risks a nuclear domino effect across Mideast
– Dennis Ross: Outlining concerns with the nuclear deal
– Leon Hadar: Obama chose US interests over Israel ones
– Boaz Bismuth: Zarif laughs as deceit wins
– Stephen Kinzer: A step towards reimagining the Mideast
Israel and the Palestinians
• Just days after he was released, Israeli police briefly detained Palestinian hunger-striker Khader Adnan.
Adnan was detained in the Old City of Jerusalem, where he sought to attend Ramadan prayers, because Israeli restrictions barred Palestinians under 50 from attending, police said.
• Jeremy Corbyn, who is vying for the UK Labor Party leadership, was called onto the carpet over his support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Check out the feisty exchange with Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

• Memo to the International Business Times and reporter Ludovica Iaccino: Hebron’s Jewish history didn’t start in 1967.
• As Saeb Erekat assumes role of PLO’s Number 2 man, Palestinian officials deny wagging tongues that he is now the favorite to succeed Mahmoud Abbas. More at Maan News.
• India and Israel: A growing romance.
• Vanity Fair takes a closer look at French anti-Semitism through the eyes of a retired French Jewish police commissioner and one of the hostages from in the Hyper Cacher terror attack (who discloses some fascinating details about Amedy Coulibaly).
Commentary/Analysis
• Food for thought: The world’s not interested in the West Bank and Gaza because it’s the safest place in the world for Arabs. Amir Taheri explains:
But there are other reasons the Palestine issue has lost much of its luster for many Arabs. One reason was cited the other evening by a Jordanian businessman, Abu Furas, at a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner in London. “Today, no Arab feels safe in his country,” he said. “Ironically, the sole exceptions are Palestinians in the West Bank because they know Israel will defend them if ISIS attacks. Even in Gaza, most people secretly believe that Israel is their ultimate protection against ISIS fighters trying to strike roots in the Sinai.”

Though the idea of Arabs being saved by Israel from massacre by their own brethren sounds fantastic, events on the ground lend it some weight.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Eitan Haber: No death penalty for terrorists
– Bassam Eid: Gaza one year later: from bad to worse
Featured image: CC BY-SA Tom Woodward via flickr with additions by HonestReporting

Admin Tue 14 Jul 2015, 11:52 am

Clock Ticks Down on Nuke Talks Deadline
Israel Daily News Stream22 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. I don’t know what’s happening in Vienna, but an announcement that a nuclear agreement has been reached probably won’t be in the offing by the time you read this roundup.
The talks will continue even as an agreement remains elusive. According to AP, diplomats are still snagged on A) attempts to probe Iran’s weaponization efforts, B) the lifting of a UN arms embargo, and C) Tehran’s “insistence that any U.N. Security Council resolution approving the nuclear deal be written in a way that stops describing Iran’s nuclear activities as illegal.”
Will there be an agreement, an extension, or a blowup? Every little development is being scrutinized for meaning. Stay tuned . . .
Joyce Karam

2. Haaretz: Israel agreed to discuss the West Bank situation with EU diplomats, but the agenda itself is up for discussion.
A senior official in Jerusalem said that while the EU wanted to discuss construction of settlements and steps that could threaten the two-state solution, Israel made clear it was prepared only for the talks to deal with improving the economic situation for Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip . . .

Israel’s second condition is that negotiations not deal with issues involving a permanent agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
News breaks fast. Get HonestReporting alerts by e-mail
and never miss a thing.
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3. Following Islamic State’s Sinai offensive, Israel began outfitting commercial planes servicing Eilat with missile defense pods. The SkyShield system being installed on Arkia and Israir planes uses lasers and a thermal camera to deflect rockets away from aircraft.
4. Jerusalem’s Old City is not “endangered.” Please add your name to our letter demanding CNN report accurately about the holy city.
CNN
Israel and the Palestinians
• IDF military police are probing at least five senior officers over Gaza war. According to the Times of Israel:
Because the probes center around judgement calls, a fierce debate has erupted within the IDF between those who believe the incidents warrant full Military Police investigations, which can lead to criminal prosecution, and those who want the inquiries limited to operational debriefings, which are usually dealt with internally.

A senior source told Army Radio that it is unlikely that any of the officers will be indicted.
• AP: UNESCO backs Jordan as Jesus’ baptism site as debate goes on.
• Britain’s new ambassador to Israel, David Quarrey, took up his post today. Quarrey replaces Matthew Gould, the first Jew to hold the position.
Around the World
• In his first interview as director general of Israel’s foreign ministry, Dore Gold discussed Israel’s efforts to foil Iran’s nuclear agenda in a Times of Israel Q&A.
Imagine you could stop the Soviet Union in 1945 from getting nuclear weapons. Imagine you had no Cold War. That would have been a much safer and better world. You would have never had a Cuban missile crisis. You would have never had a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. All that would never have occurred. Eastern Europe would have been free. It’s understandable how it happened, how the Cold War emerged from World War II. But here, with Iran, you have the chance to prevent it. And if you don’t prevent it, you’re setting the stage for the next global struggle.
• Tweet of the day: Eli Lake
Eli Lake

• Times of Israel: Hackers — likely working for the Syrian government or Hezbollah — managed to breach the computers of Israeli activists, exposing Israeli and American contacts with the Syrian opposition. Were agents working for Israel exposed?
• Iran made illegal purchases of nuclear weapons technology last month.
• An Iranian Revolutionary Guards colonel killed in Zabadani fighting.
• In Tehran, the closed door trial of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian continued. Rezaian, a dual US-Iranian national, was arrested nearly a year ago on charges of espionage.
Jon Williams
• An Israeli-Canadian woman returned to Israel after fighting alongside Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq against Islamic State. Gill Rosenberg described her eight months on the frontlines to YNet.
• Greece and Europe reached an agreement on a debt bailout, averting fears of a “Grexit.” This meant some good ripples for Israel, strengthening the shekel and boosting the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Commentary/Analysis
sun• Worth reading: Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the UK, Daniel Taub, got op-ed space in The Guardian to explain why international pressure on Israel doesn’t help peace.
One troubling and recurrent theme has been that the main thing Britain can do to promote peace in the Middle East is to exert pressure on Israel.

On hearing this, I am reminded of the fable of the north wind and the sun. In their competition, the north wind fails to blow the cloak off a passing traveller no matter how hard it blows; yet the sun succeeds, by warming the traveller’s surroundings, and encouraging him to take off the cloak himself.

Recent years have yielded no shortage of wind . . .

But in fact, the Israeli people’s boldest steps towards peace have taken place when the international community has been most receptive to their concerns.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Emily Landau: Taking stock of a failed negotiation
– Reuven Berko: Nuclear negotiators addicted to self-deception
– Yonah Bob: The IDF vs. ICC in phase 2
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Palestinians cannot make peace with Israel
– Ben-Dror Yemini: BDS’ useful idiots at Haaretz
– Eugene Kontorovich: Can states fund BDS?
– Hussain Abdul-Hussain: Lebanon’s confused shiites

Admin Mon 13 Jul 2015, 12:28 pm

Diplomats Extend Nuke Talks As Iranians Burn Flags
Israel Daily News Stream23 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Unable to seal the deal, diplomats in Vienna extended the deadline on the Iranian nuclear talks to Monday. A source told AFP that “98 percent of the text is done.” According to Ehud Yaari, the agreement is essentially finished with the US reportedly blinking. Snap inspections are out, managed inspections are in.
. . in other words, there will be no surprise visits, only those that are pre-arranged and approved by the Iranian regime.
2. “Al-Quds Day,” Iran’s annual death-to-Israel festival went on with all the incitement, hostility, and flag burnings you’d expect to see when tens of thousands of people march in the streets of Tehran with government permission.
The Iranians launched a game app featuring Iranian missiles destroying Israeli targets, and chanting demonstrators tied the Saudis to the traditional Great Satan conspiracies. Some 700 Islamists marched in Berlin too. And Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah made clear that the road to Palestine leads through the Yarmouk refugee camp Syria.
Sobhan Hassanvand
3. Israel released hunger-striking prisoner Khader Adnan. Several news services, including AP, Reuters, CNN, and BBC, noted Adnan’s role in the Islamic Jihad terror group, Unfortunately, AFP readers will remain ignorant.
Just to remove any doubt about the kind of person we’re talking about, watch Adnan in his own words at the funeral of an Islamic Jihad commander in 2007.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Following up on the two Israelis who disappeared in Gaza: According to Israeli media reports, Jerusalem fears Avraham Mengistu is no longer alive. And Hamas claims Tony Blair is now mediating. The identity of the young Israeli Bedouin man missing hasn’t been released to the public, but the family told reporters he is mentally ill, and has crossed borders several times. The Jerusalem Post quoted one relative:
“. . . he crossed the border once to Jordan, once to Egypt and once to Gaza – in February 2010 – and in all three cases he was returned to the family. The fourth time he must have entered Gaza again and didn’t return.”
• It turns out Mengistu and the unidentified Bedouin man aren’t the only people crossing the border. Reuters discloses that 130 Palestinians were caught in the past year jumping the border fence.
An Israeli military officer in the Gaza Division said most border-jumpers are unarmed teens looking for work or to escape family hardship. For some, jail may be more appealing than life in Gaza, with three meals a day and a chance to study.
• Mahmoud Abbas recalls envoy to Chile for anti-Semitic remark.
• Top Israeli peace negotiator Silvan Shalom said The Arab peace initiative of 2002 is unacceptable because it has been through too many revisions. Among the most significant points the proposal now calls for:
1. Returning the Golan Heights to Syria.
2. Full Palestinian “right” of return.
3. The 1967 borders serving as the basis for talks.
• Thousands of Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians posted “Death to Jews” on their Facebook profiles. Algemeiner picked up on a report by Israel’s 0404 News.
• Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times‘s public editor addressed acknowledged reader complaints about the paper’s inappropriate headline/photo combo we addressed last week.
NYT
A photo of Palestinian women mourning that accompanied an article about a teenager killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank. Some readers believed it elicited sympathy for someone who didn’t deserve it. Penina Greenspan wrote: “Your coverage of the death of Muhammad Hani al-Kasba was misleading in its portrayal of the nature of the incident. A number of photographs circulated by his friends on the Internet depict him as he truly was, and you should use them to convey his character and intentions accurately. He was not some kid throwing stones. He was a militant and a terrorist seeking to kill.”
• First senior officer to be investigated over Protective Edge conduct. Or is Lt. Col. Nerya Yeshurun a victim of what soldiers call the legal Iron Dome?
• New arrests for Tabgha church arson.
• From the Times of London:
A former chairman of the best-known mosque in Leeds owned a company linked to the distribution of a children’s DVD that glorified suicide bomb attacks on Israelis.
This is one of the films featured on the DVD:

• The Wall St. Journal notes a rising trend in religious tourism in Israel.
• A Dublin-based travel agency ran afoul of the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) for brochure whose map of the holy land failed to include the Palestinian borders (“it could cause offense”). Take your pick of the Irish Independent or the ASAI.
Around the World
• More than 200 Americans sought to join up with Islamic State, according to FBI figures.
Compared to other Western nations, however, the figure of 200 people attempting to join ISIS abroad is relatively low.

Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before Congress that as many as 20,000 foreign fighters had joined ISIS’s ranks, about 3,400 of them from Western nations.
• 14 Islamists sentenced for targeting kosher shops in France
• In France, fear and defiance mix 6 months after kosher market attack
• Tweet of the day goes to William Booth:
William Booth
Commentary/Analysis
• Mordechai Kedar: It’s time for the world to relate to ISIS as a state.
Denial is of no use, however, and laundering a name will not change reality, because what looks like a state, sounds like a state and functions like a state – is a state, even if we dislike it intensely. Denying Islamic State’s existence is like much of the Arab world’s denial of Israel’s existence for over 67 years and their use of the insulting name “The Zionist Entity” for the Jewish State.
• Dore Gold got op-ed space in the Daily Telegraph:
Trusting Iran to stop terrorism is like inviting an arsonist to join the fire brigade
• Does the the State Department response to Congress’s Israel boycott law amount to an extraordinary line-item veto for trade legislation? Eugene Kontorovich wonders . . .
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend:
– David Horovitz: Israel cannot countenance another Shalit deal
– Bassam Tawil: Time for Paleatinians to take stock of their affairs
– Guy Bechor: Israel must use UN as an offensive tool
– Avi Issacharoff: Hamas and Islamic State’s unlikely alliance
– Jonathan Tobin: UNESCO crosses the line into anti-Semitism
– Amanda Borschel-Dan: BDS: the politically correct way to delegitimize Israel
– Jonathan Rosenblum: Campus thought patrol
– Ephraim Sneh: Nuclear deal or not, Israel faces a dangerous future
Featured image: CC BY flickr/Nick Page with additions by HonestReporting

Admin Thu 09 Jul 2015, 2:40 pm

Two Israelis Missing in Gaza
Israel Daily News Stream30 mins ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Two Israelis disappeared in Gaza. The disclosure came after Haaretz got a gag order lifted.
Hamas captured 28-year-old Avraham (Avera) Mengistu, a mentally ill Ethiopian Jew, after he climbed over the border fence last September. The second man, a Bedouin whose name has not been released, entered Gaza through the Erez crossing in April. Neither has been seen since.
Avera Mengistu
Avera Mengistu
Israel is working through foreign intermediaries to secure their release. Hamas claims it doesn’t know Mengitsu’s whereabouts and says it believes he went to the Sinai through a tunnel in order to make his way to Ethiopia. Israel isn’t buying that story.
. . . there are two reasons why Hamas would disseminate this false story: the first is to preserve him as an “asset “ for future negotiations with Israel.

The second possibility is that something bad happened to him, and the person responsible for him is hiding that information from everyone, including senior Hamas officials.
It’s believed that Hamas also has the bodies of Lt. Hadar Goldin and Staff-Sgt. Oron Shaul, who were killed during Operation Protective Edge. Hamas hasn’t offered evidence to confirm this, but it demands that Israel release Palestinian prisoners who were freed in the Gilad Shalit swap but re-arrested after the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teens.
2. Israel opened contact with International Criminal Court prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. According to Haaretz:
Israel’s reason for opening contacts with the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor is only to make its position clear to the court – that the ICC does not have any authority to hear Palestinian complaints on the matter – a senior Israeli official told Haaretz.
3. Argentinian Jews are fuming after President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner used Shylock to explain Greece’s financial crisis, then reiterated it on Twitter.
4. Israel’s Existence Lost in BBC Translation: Why did translators deliberately leave out a whole world of meaning?
5. Follow FightingBDS on Twitter for everything you need to know about the assault on Israel’s legitimacy and how to fight back. And stay tuned for a soon-to-be-released Fighting BDS e-book.
FightingBDS
Israel and the Palestinians
• For a fleeting moment, I really thought AFP was going spin Hamas as responsible for Gaza’s woes. After describing a Hamas rally with plenty of trash talk, AFP built me up with this paragraph:
Despite the belligerent talk, there appears to be little appetite for conflict on either side for now. Analysts however say failing to address the misery of Gazans who have faced three wars in six years will only sow the seeds for future violence.
What a tease that was. The next paragraph continued in this direction:
A UN official on Wednesday called for an end to the “inexcusable” Israeli blockade of the territory that has helped prevent rebuilding.
• The New York Times sat down with outgoing UNRWA director Robert Turner.
“If we can’t open our schools in September, I think the reaction of our population will be pretty severe,” Mr. Turner said. “We’re really the last institution standing. We’re the last thing the population trusts.”
• With Holland’s foreign minister scheduled to visit Israel and the Palestinians next week, i24 News takes a look at the Dutch diplomatic role in trying to get peace talks back on track.
Mideast Matters
• I can already see the juxtaposition of photos on the front page of Israeli papers: Mobs in Tehran burning Israeli flags while Kerry and Zarif shake hands in Vienna. We could be in for some amusingly contradictory sound bites.
Tehran’s anti-Israel Quds day falls on date of new Iran deadline
• I liked the refreshing candor of this AP headline.
AP
• How’s Egypt’s war on Islamic State going? The Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) takes a closer look. Don’t be surprised if the Israeli weather report calls for sunny with a chance of rockets:
Israeli analysts said last week’s onslaught near the border and rocket launches from Sinai into southern Israel aim to stir friction between Israel and Egypt by inviting retaliation. Any Israeli military incursion into the neighboring territory, however, risks exposing Egypt’s military weakness and straining their strategic alliance.
• Hezbollah fighters reportedly deserting posts amid Syria offensive
Commentary/Analysis
• What’s the significance of the Hamas possibly having two captive Israeli citizens? Ron Ben-Yishai says it’s not necessarily a worst case scenario, while Avi Issacharoff notes Hamas will seek a high price for their return.
• Here’s a very thoughtful and counter-intuitive view on the unfolding nuclear agreement: Once a deal is reached, it paradoxically makes a military option more likely. Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz explain why in the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News).
No American president would destroy Iranian nuclear sites without first exhausting diplomacy. The efforts by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to compromise with Tehran—on uranium enrichment, verification and sanctions relief, among other concerns—are comprehensive, if nothing else. If the next president chose to strike after the Iranians stonewalled or repeatedly violated Mr. Obama’s agreement, however, the newcomer would be on much firmer political ground, at home and abroad, than if he tried without this failed accord.

Without a deal the past will probably repeat itself: Washington will incrementally increase sanctions while the Iranians incrementally advance their nuclear capabilities. Without a deal, diplomacy won’t die.
You’ll have to read the full piece to see why Gerecht and Dubowitz almost take it for granted that Iran will cheat.
• Yiftah Curiel has me going hmmmmm.
IBT
• Worth reading: Brett Kline calls on BDS supporters in the West to visit Israel and the PA, and see for themselves why boycotts harm the Palestinians.
How much contact do boycott proponents have with average Palestinians, not those who work in offices in Ramallah? If they were to come to Husan and dozens of other villages like it in the West Bank, the European and American activists would find that Palestinian entrepreneurs and workers want and need more contact with Israelis, not less.

“We small-time entrepreneurs in Palestine cannot survive without working with Israelis, and the benefits are mutual,” Samir states. “For us, the boycott, the moukata’a, is ridiculous. Nobody here likes the Israeli occupation, but cutting ties would be a death wish.” . . .

Samir and his family, and others like them, would be hurt more than Israelis would by a boycott. Enabling their economic survival is more important than winning politically correct propaganda points for international media consumption.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Mudar Zahran: If Israel disappears, others will too
– Alex Fishman: Marketing a bad nuclear agreement
– Jennifer Rubin: Why Iran’s irrationality matters
– Jonathan Tobin: Who benefits from endless negotiations?
– Times of London (staff-ed): In praise of walls: fenced frontiers keep danger at ba
Featured image: CC0 Unsplash/Thong Vo with additions by HonestReporting

Admin Thu 09 Jul 2015, 2:32 pm

UNESCO Slams Israel Over Jerusalem’s Old City
Israel Daily News Stream24 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Perhaps taking a cue from CNN, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee adopted a resolution slamming Israel over Jerusalem’s Old City. Could the denunciation be any more one-sided?
The resolution, adopted by the World Heritage Committee meeting in Bonn, Germany, takes Israel to task for – among other grievances – the following allegations: engaging in “illegal excavations” in the Old City; causing damage to structures on the Temple Mount; impeding restoration work on the Temple Mount; and damaging the “visual integrity” of the Old City with the Jerusalem light rail.

It also deplored various Israeli projects in and around the Old City and the Western Wall Plaza, which it referred to as the “Buraq Plaza.”
HerodGate
Old City of Jerusalem, Herod’s Gate
2. Here’s a new conflict of interest that doesn’t help the credibility of the UN’s report on last year’s Gaza war. The Times of Israel reports:
A European Union official involved in negotiating on behalf of the EU over the text of Friday’s UN Human Rights Council resolution that condemned Israel for last summer’s Gaza War is married to a staff member of the UNHRC commission that investigated the war.

The link between EU policy officer Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan, who was tasked with reviewing the Gaza war report and helping advise EU representatives on how to vote on it, and McGowan Davis Commission staffer Sara Hamood was known to the EU but not made public . . .

Bellion-Jourdan is the main European representative to the Human Rights Council dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian portfolio . . .

Hamood formerly served as spokeswoman for arguably the most anti-Israel body created by the UN, the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, and has penned various reports critical of Israel.
3. YNet: Hamas reportedly close to restoring its pre-war stockpile of mortars and short range rockets, but not the longer-range ones capable of reaching Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
4. HonestReporting secured a pair of corrections today in the UK press. See how we took action and got results with The Independent and Daily Telegraph.
5. CNN’s Extinction of Jerusalem: Yarden Frankl wonders what CNN was thinking when it blamed Israel for endangering Jerusalem’s Old City.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Notwithstanding Hamas denials that it attacked civilian targets during Operation Protective Edge, the terror group boasted on Twitter of the targets it fired on during the war: including Ben Gurion Airport, the Dimona nuclear reactor, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Gush Dan (Tel Aviv and surrounding areas). More at the Jerusalem Post.
• Reuters picked up on Israeli allegations that Hamas and Islamic State are in cahoots.
• What lessons has the IDF learned from Operation Protective Edge? The Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel take a closer look.
In a nutshell, the army expects terrorists to bring the next war to Israeli soil. But more boots on the ground in Gaza will present Hamas with an existential fight as the IDF seeks to shorten the length of engagement.
• William Schabas appeared on BBC’s HARD Talk to defend his commission’s inquiry into Operation Protective Edge. I was very impressed with Steven Sackur’s tough questioning.
• As a result of rocket fire from last year’s war, 40 percent of Sderot children suffer from anxiety, PTSD.
• Palestinian FM claims France drops bid for UN resolution to kick start peace talks. But the PA’s distancing itself from Riad al-Malki’s comments. Too bad the PA’s not distancing itself from comments by its envoy to Chile. Imad Nabil Jada’a was caught on video endorsing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in a talk last May.
• The Media Line: Israel’s tourism industry still hurting from last summer’s conflict.
• Palestinian power struggles continue, with Mohammed Dahlan winning today’s round. A PA court ruled that Dahlan can keep his parliamentary immunity while fighting corruption charges.
It increases the likelihood Dahlan will decide to return to the West Bank to clear his name and challenge Abbas.
• If you want a great example of the over-reporting of Israel, today’s top non-story is from Reuters: Palestinian selfies?!
Reuters
• An Egyptian bank is taking legal action in Israel to get back it’s stake in Jerusalem’s famous King David Hotel, reports the Times of London. Turns out an Egyptian bank that helped finance the King David’s construction in 1929 was compensated with 1,000 shares in the hotel.
The new lawsuit claims that the bank’s shares are worth at least $1.3 million but says that figure may grow.
You know, if an Egyptian bank can take legal action to reclaim lost assets in Israel, why shouldn’t Jews from Arab countries reclaim billions of dollars in lost assets too?
Mideast Matters
• Worth reading: Anshel Pfeffer lays out Who’s who in the Iran talks — and what do they want?
• According to official Egyptian sources, nearly 250 Islamic State goons have been killed in the Sinai and another 60 were arrested, while losing “only” 17 soldiers. Handle these figures with caution: Reporters who cite any stats contradicting the state line could face two years in prison under new Egyptian laws.
• Someone tried to hack a Patriot missile battery stationed along the Turkish-Syrian border. It’s not clear whodunnit or what the effect on the missiles was:
If true, the possibility that Patriot missiles are vulnerable to cyber attacks is cause for concern in Israel, which actively operates the US-manufactured battery — although the military plans to gradually scale back use of the Patriot in favor of the Israeli-made David’s Sling missile defense system, set to become operational this year.

A conceivable cyber attack on such a battery would likely be for one of two purposes: either to remotely commandeer the battery to launch attacks, or to steal sensitive intelligence information about the system.
Patriot
A Patriot missile test, 2013
Around the World
• 13-year-old Jewish boy wearing kippah attacked in Paris.
• The Steven Salaita affair is proving very costly for the University of Illinois: $843,000 in legal fees to be precise, so far, according to the News-Gazette of Champaign-Urbana. It’s not clear how much of the university’s defense is supported by public funds.
The University of Illinois rescinded a job offer amid an outcry over several incendiary tweets, prompting Salaita to sue for compensation and to get his job back. He was recently hired to teach at the American University of Beirut. It’s not clear how much of the university’s money is from public funds.
• Israeli-Belgian musician under BDS pressure to sign boycott letter
Commentary/Analysis
• Over at the International Business Times, Janet Svirzenski of Kibbutz Nir Yizthak recounts life along the Gaza border during last year’s war.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Ron Kampeas: The US and Iran: What happens once a deal is in place?
– Clifford May: Desperately seeking diplomatic defeat
– Laurie Blank: What the UN report on Gaza left out
– William Jacobson: AP’s false history of BDS movement

Featured image: CC BY flickr/Kheel Center with additions by HonestReporting; Herod’s Gate CC BY-ND flickr/Israel_photo_gallery; Patriot CC BY flickr/The US Army;

Admin Tue 07 Jul 2015, 9:51 pm

Nuclear Negotiators Agree to “Three-Stage” Approval Process
Israel Daily News Stream July 5, 2015
Today’s Top Stories
1. AP: International negotiators agreed on a draft document detailing the timing and pace of sanctions relief for Iran. Haaretz fills in more details on the “three-stages” of approval.
The current round of talks would end with an “adoption of the agreement” but probably without a formal signing.

That stage would last about two months, during which the U.S. Senate and Iranian parliament would consider and vote on the deal. (It seems a veto from U.S. President Barack Obama would be needed to overcome Republican opposition in the Senate.)

During the next stage, the Iranians would have to let inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency confirm that Tehran was keeping to the deal and had halted its nuclear program for possible military purposes. Only at the end of this process, probably toward the end of this year, would the agreement officially take effect.

This framework is meant to meet a central requirement that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei raised two weeks ago: The economic sanctions on Iran must be lifted immediately upon the signing of the agreement.
Anshel Pfeffer
2. “Sinai Province” the Islamic State affiliate in Egypt, claimed responsibility for three Grad rockets fired at southern Israel on Friday. The rockets landed in open areas of the Negev, causing no damage.
3. Mahmoud Abbas tipped his hand on his preferred successor. Old guard Saeb Erekat will be the PLO’s new secretary-general. Jerusalem Post coverage. But the would-be outgoing secretary-general, Yasser Abed Rabbo, is putting up a fight.

4. CNN: Jerusalem’s Old City “On the Verge of Extinction”: Network includes Jerusalem’s Old City as an example of “25 magnificent structures on the verge of extinction.”
5. Death of Palestinian Stone Thrower Leads to More Headline Fails: These headlines play head games.
petition6. Please add your name to this letter to the Public Editor of the New York Times and make your voice heard.
The New York Times must tell the truth about Israel and the UN Human Rights Council
Israel and the Palestinians
• A 17-year-old Palestinian was shot and while stoning an IDF officer’s vehicle. According to the Times of Israel:
The Israel Defense Forces said troops driving a vehicle near the West Bank village of al-Ram, north of Jerusalem, came under a hail of stones and boulders, which shattered their windshield. The soldiers exited the vehicle called to the stone-throwers to stop, firing a warning shot into the air. When the attack continued, according to the IDF, the troops opened fire, injuring one of the attackers.
• The PA arrested 100 Hamas members in a West Bank crackdown.
• Palestinians continued heating up the holy month of Ramadan: We’re talking about stone throwing at the Temple Mount‘s Mughrabi Gate, a forest fire caused by firebombs, plus YNet picking up on the first appearance of pro-Islamic State graffiti in eastern Jerusalem. More at the Washington Post.
• UNESCO added the Beit Shearim National Park to its list of World Heritage sites. Located in the Lower Galilee, Beit Shearim was a Roman-era town now best known for a network of 30 burial caves.
Beit Shearim
• No surprises as the UN Human Rights Council voted to adopt the Schabas report on the Gaza war. The US was the only country voting against it, though India’s abstention was regarded as ray of light.
Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands were among the EU nations voting for the report.
• The Episcopal church rejected efforts to divest from Israel, while the Mennonite church delayed a vote on a similar measure for two years. More at the New York Times and AP.
• Does Israel still “occupy” Gaza? The Washington Post asked Israeli and Palestinian experts.
• A post-script on Professor Steven Salaita (The University of Illinois voided a job offer last year over a series of anti-Israel tweets during Operation Protective Edge). Salaita was given the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut, where his tweets and academic work will fit right in.
Steven Salaita
• What’s the big deal about the Jordan River water used for Princess Charlotte’s christening, and how did it get to London? The BBC takes a look at the water from the Holy Land trade.
Mideast Matters
• Reuters: Iran deploys new home-built long-range radar
• If sanctions are lifted, what will Iran do with its $100 billion windfall?
• France set to rush the Iranian market after sanctions relief.
• Wall St. Journal: Arabs fleeing Islamic State goons threaten Kurdistan’s ethnic balance. Click via Google News.
Around the World
• Regarding yesterday’s neo-Nazi rally in London that had Jews worried, the Jewish Chronicle summed it up in 135 characters (including the spaces). Other papers reported a less generous turnout.
About 20 neo-Nazi demonstrators were confronted by hundreds of counter-protesters in a clear show of anti-fascist defiance on Saturday.
The Independent
• Rioters chant against “Jewish murderers” in Muslim Dutch neighborhood
• Israel signed an $111 million contract with Argentina to upgrade the army’s tanks, and provide technical assistance and training.
• French synagogues batten the hatches after Lyon jihad horror.
Commentary/Analysis
• The UN Human Rights Council voted to adopt the Schabas report. Raphael Ahren and Herb Keinon explain why the consequences for Israel weren’t as bad they could’ve been.
• Worth reading: Vassar College’s Professor Jill Schneiderman lays out how academic boycotts of Israel harm American students after a trip to Israel she arranged for a group of her students was nearly cancelled by the BDS movement.
boycott• A bigger threat than BDS: anti-normalization
The anti-normalization movement has called for an end to all interactions between Israelis and Palestinians that do not subscribe to three key tenets: ending the occupation; equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians; and a full right of return for Palestinian refugees. These three tenets are shared with the BDS movement, and, as such, the two movements are joined at the hip. Yet the effects on the ground of the anti-normalization movement are far more serious.

It seeks to police all interactions between Israelis and Palestinians, and, as such, disrupts programs that it perceives as being unaligned with its agenda. This makes life particularly hard for those of us in the “people-to-people” community – who bring Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians together in school, agricultural, high-tech and advocacy programs or camps.
• What’s in a name? Soeren Kern and Col. Richard Kemp weigh in on UK politicians trying to ban the term, Islamic State.
Richard Kemp
• Can France really fight Islamic radicalism while indirectly funding the Gaza flotilla, and organizations that support boycotting Israel? Ben-Dror Yemini doesn’t think so.
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend:
– Mordechai Kedar: Ramadan terror
– William Jacobson: Israelis don’t like Obama taking risks with their lives
– Elhanan Miller: Sinai terror sends Gaza back to square one
– Elliott Abrams: Terror in Sinai
– Eyal Zisser: Hamas left all alone
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Who is damaging relations between Arabs and Jews?
– Jonathan Tobin: Gaza flotilla brought hate, not aid
– David Harris: UN Human Wrongs Council
– Charles Krauthammer: Iran: The worst deal in US diplomatic history
• Last but not least, a Toronto Star staff-ed calls on Ottawa to do more to help Gaza reconstruction.

Featured image: CC BY-SA flickr/Sascha Kohlmann with additions by HonestReporting; petition CC BY flickr/League of Women Voters; Beit Shearim CC BY-NC flickr/vad_levin; boycott CC BY flickr/Salaam Shalom

Will Nuclear Deal Formally Recognize Iranian Spheres of Influence?
Israel Daily News Stream7 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Nuclear negotiators agreed to extend the talks deadline till Friday. According to Haaretz, an agreement might be reached by this weekend. Iran’s latest demand is for an end to an arms embargo:
So far, the Americans, British and French have refused to discuss this demand, because the sanctions on arms sales aren’t related to Iran’s nuclear program, but to the fear that Tehran will transfer weaponry to various Mideast terrorist organizations. But it’s not yet clear whether this is an unequivocal Iranian demand or a mere negotiating tactic aimed at achieving concessions in other areas.
More at the Daily Telegraph.
2. Does an annex to the nuclear accords recognize Iranian spheres of influence in the Levant as legitimate?
3. Six Israeli-Arabs (four of whom were teachers in a Bedouin village) were arrested by Israel for supporting Islamic State and spreading its ideology. Three of the group allegedly had previously joined Islamic State fighters in Syria. CNN writes:
Police say the teacher would sing songs praising ISIS in class, express his support for the terrorist organization, and show students map drawings of the self-proclaimed Islamic State — the group’s preferred moniker, and also the way it refers to its wide swath of territory across Syria and Iraq.

4. Frank Luntz Sounds the Alarm on US Support, BDS: Is BDS gaining the ear of the Democratic Party?
5. HR Radio: NYT or CNN: Which Is Worse? Did IDF soldiers kill a Palestinian terrorist for “no reason?” And what to make of CNN’s claim that Jerusalem’s Old City is on verge of extinction? Click on the image to listen to Yarden Frankl’s interview on the Voice of Israel.
YardenVOI
Israel and the Palestinians
• YNet: Hamas-Fatah tensions are escalating. The number of Hamas figures arrested in the PA’s latest West Bank dragnet is up to 170.
• The Daily Telegraph removed a timeline from the bottom of a story marking the anniversary of last year’s Gaza war. The problem? A mistaken assertion that the three Israeli teenagers kidnapped in June were killed by “live IDF fire.” We were in touch with the Telegraph, asking editors to simply correct the error. Maybe they’re fact-checking the entire timeline before restoring it?
Daily Telegraph

• The Finance Ministry crunched some numbers to get a sense of how damaging an international boycott of Israel would be. Scenarios vary between politically sanctioned and unofficial boycotts, and whether they’d apply to all Israel or just settlements. The Times of Israel writes:
In an extreme scenario, where the EU boycotts all Israeli products and stops foreign investments in the country – sanctions similar to those imposed on Apartheid South Africa – 36,500 people would be jobless and Israel would lose NIS 40 billion [$10.5 billion] in revenue annually.
• The Associated Press took a closer look at the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Thumbs up to reporter Tia Goldenberg for following up on this point about BDS bigshot Omar Barghouti. He’s so hypocritical.
Barghouti, a U.S.-educated engineer who is also pursuing a graduate degree at Israel’s Tel Aviv University, said the BDS movement is “completely neutral” on the political solution to the conflict. But he said he represents the Palestinian “consensus,” and any deal that “undermines our basic rights under international law and perpetuates the colonial oppression” is unacceptable.

As for his attendance at a university he asks others to boycott, he said Palestinians “cannot possibly observe the same boycott guidelines as asked of internationals,” adding that the “indigenous population” is entitled to all services they can get from the system.
John Ware
If Palestinians really can’t observe the same boycott guidelines asked of internationals, what’s wrong with Palestinians working for good wages in, say, a West Bank SodaStream factory?
• BBC journalist John Ware spoke out against his corporation’s news coverage of Israel.
He said the BBC had failed to scrutinise the Palestinian side of the conflict.

“I do think there is a deficit – and it’s a point I have often made to the BBC,” he added.

“Western media outlets as a whole, do not [look at] the individuals and culture of the Palestinian side of the conflict anything like the same extent the Israeli side is scrutinised.

“I think that is a deficit and needs to be dealt with.

“I think if it was dealt with people would have a much better understanding of the more polarised positions that people think the Israelis take.”
• It’s not clear what prompted this, but two Palestinian prisoners temporarily suspended their hunger strikes. Can you do that during Ramadan?
• A Palestinian envoy to Chile was caught on video denying the existence of Jewish people.
• Reporter Ben Lynfield of The Independent visited Kibbutz Nirim, one of many Israeli communities near the Gaza border. People injured in mortar attacks are still recovering, kids are still dealing with trauma, and not everyone wants to stay.
However, she added that her own daughter, whose wedding last July had to be moved to another venue because of rocket fire, wants to leave.

“She had a baby two months ago and she wants to live any place but here because she’s scared. Ever since she was a little kid she’s been scared of infiltrations. I used to be able to tell her, ‘Don’t worry, there are guards and the army’. But now with tunnels that popped up so significantly into our awareness during the last war I can’t tell her that it’s an illogical fear. A tunnel can pop up into the middle of our community.”
• Correction of the Day, from AP:
In a story June 30 about Palestinian protesters whitewashing a gay pride rainbow flag, The Associated Press reported erroneously that homosexual acts are banned by law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While homosexuality is largely taboo in Palestinian society, there are no laws specifically banning homosexual acts.
A fair enough correction. Of course, there wouldn’t be any laws protecting gay Palestinians when they’re beaten to a pulp by other homophobic Palestinians . . .
Mideast Matters
• Tweet of the Day, from Michael Wilner in Vienna:
Michael Wilner
• Reuters takes a closer look at what the end of sanctions would mean for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its financial empire.
A Western diplomat who follows Iran closely told Reuters that the IRGC’s recent annual turnover from all of its business activities was estimated to be around $10-12 billion.

Iranian officials refuse to reveal the IRGC’s market share, but $12 billion would be around a sixth of Iran’s declared GDP, at current exchange rates.

“They control major companies, and businesses in Iran such as tourism, transportation, energy, construction, telecommunication and Internet,” said an Iranian official in Tehran who asked not to be named.
• The White House is already considering a Mideast strategy for after a nuclear agreement with Iran. Apparently, President Obama is eyeing a political resolution to the Syrian civil war that includes Bashar Assad’s departure. I wonder if this strategy considered Iran spreading its post-sanctions windfall to friends like Assad and Hezbollah. Which way will the momentum swing when we hear cha-ching echoing in Damascus? The Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) writes:
“There’s a growing sense that momentum has turned against Assad and that is feeding a belief that there could be more opening on the political track.”
The White House still insists Iran will use the money to fix its economy.
• Syrian rebels threatened to cut off water to Damascus if the Assad regime and Hezbollah don’t call off an offensive against Zabadani, a city near the Lebanese border. A militia called Wadi Barada controls a spring northwest of Damascus from which the capital’s water is piped.
Around the World
• Amid their country’s financial crisis, Greek Jews struggle and brace for more turmoil.
Greece
• UK protesters shut down Israeli-owned drone factories in Staffordshire and Kent. More at Haaretz and the BBC.
• Of the 130 flags flying at a Milan expo, only Israel’s has been vandalized repeatedly.
• Now that Amazon is no longer selling merchandise featuring Confederate flags, the Los Angeles Times looks at what this means for efforts to get Holocaust-denying books removed as well.
• Meanwhile in France:
– Surge in French aliyah spurred by start-up nation
– Explosives stolen from army base in France
Commentary/Analysis
• Elliott Abrams articulates why it matters to Americans that Egypt is crafting a law forbidding journalists from reporting terror stats that differ from government sources:
But eliminating freedom of the press is not a step toward crushing terrorism, and in fact it is harmful to the effort. The Egyptian public deserves to know how its government is performing, and Army press releases are not a reliable source of information.

Same goes for Americans, who are contributing $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt. We, and the Congress, have the right to know how the battle is going, how the Egyptians are performing, what kind of aid or training might be more effective, and whether the aid should be continued. It will be a lot harder to find out when Egypt’s best journalists are in prison, in exile, or silenced by fear.
• Here’s an interesting question posed by Charles Dunlap:
The Hill
• India abstention from the UN Human Rights Council vote to adopt the Schabas report caught the attention of the Indian media. If you’re interested in how what they’re saying in India, commentary in The Diplomat, Indian Express, and Outlook. Meanwhile, The Hindu got reactions from the PA’s envoy to India.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– Kenneth Marcus: Why universities need a definition of anti-Semitism
– Nazir Mgally: The boat to Gaza: neither freedom, nor a flotilla
– Jonathan Schanzer: America and Israel are letting their enemies kill each other
– Aaron David Miller: Is no nuclear deal with Iran a better outcome for Obama?
– Dennis Ross: On Iran, worry about the deal, not the deadline
• See also staff-eds in the Washington Post (US response to Iran’s cheating is worrying omen), and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Hamas and Israel must account for Gaza violence).
Featured image: CC BY Jon S via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; Ware via YouTube/BBC Academy:Journalism; Greee via YouTube/VICE News;

Admin Thu 02 Jul 2015, 5:10 pm

Islamic State Entrenching Itself in Sinai?
Israel Daily News Stream4 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. The Egyptian army retook the northern Sinai towns of El-Arish and Sheikh Zuweid after Islamic State forces managed to seize and hold the towns for several hours yesterday.
The IDF boosted its defenses along the border, but beyond that, Israelis are clearly rattled. Army sources talking to Israeli media are concerned about Islamic State infiltrating and abducting Israelis, firing rockets, or making good on recent threats to enter Gaza and topple Hamas. Might Cairo invite Israel to join the Sinai fray? Haaretz writes:
An Egyptian source familiar with Egypt’s decision-making process told Haaretz that if Islamic State comes near Gaza, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi may “invite” the Israel Defense Forces to act against it. This will not be seen as an Israeli breach of Egypt’s sovereignty, because Gaza falls under Israel’s responsibility.

“The two armies may already be coordinating in preparation for such a possibility,” the source said. “The Egyptian problem is that a military campaign inside Gaza could lead to breaking down the fences and a mass flight of civilians from Gaza to Sinai.”
2. What’s known about Hamas and Sinai jihadists ties?
3. Expect the UN Human Rights Council to harshly criticize Israel “without demanding sanctions or any concrete moves.” Haaretz saw a draft of the resolution:
It is one-sided, and makes no mention at all of the UN inquiry commission’s criticism of Hamas and the other terrorist organizations in Gaza. The draft makes no mention of the rocket fire from Gaza or the harming of Israeli civilians, despite the relatively extensive discussion of this in the commission’s report.

According to the draft, it is also Israel’s fault that the Palestinians do not conduct investigations into alleged war crimes that they commit.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Hamas, Hezbollah said to discuss Israel ceasefire
• The ‘humanitarian aid’ aboard the recent flotilla to Gaza fit in two cardboard boxes, reports the Washington Post. It made correspondent William Booth‘s tweet of the day. You’re looking at one solar panel, and one nebulizer machine used to inhale medicine.
William Booth
Around the World
• If you’re wondering why there was so much confusion about the casualty count from yesterday’s
• Nuclear deal would leave Iran with 5,000 centrifuges:
Such a large number of centrifuges could enable Tehran to enrich enough uranium for several bombs, experts say. Countries such as Pakistan and North Korea have successfully achieved nuclear weapons status with far fewer centrifuges.

Pakistan, for instance, secured nuclear weapons by running around 3,000 centrifuges, according to analysts.
• Foreign Policy looks at the difficulties of monitor illicit Iranian smuggling of nuclear technology.
• The BBC’s resisting attempts by parliamentarians to stop calling Islamic State by that name. According to the Times of London, the MPs want the Beeb to refer to the group by its Arabic acronym, Daesh, which Islamic State considers derogatory.
MPs want the corporation to drop the label Islamic State to deprive the extremists of associations with Islam or statehood.
I’m with the Beeb here. Arab acronyms like Daesh mean nothing to English news consumers. As for the names ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) or ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), neither conveys Islamic State’s reach across the Mideast. Disassociating Islamic State from Islam doesn’t serve the public interest. The Independent picked up on the story too.
• Syrian Alawites reportedly clashed with pro-Assad forces. How to explain the unprecedented cracks between the Alawites and their native son, Bashar Assad?
First, he said, young men from the area had refused to sign up for military service.

Second, residents of the two villages were smuggling fuel in to rebel-held parts of the Al-Ghab Plain.
• Two Jews tortured by Ukraine rebels land in Israel
Commentary/Analysis
• For Egypt, avenging Sinai may include striking Gaza
• Lebanese politician Ahmad El-Assaad worries about an Iranian nuclear deal cementing Hezbollah’s grip on Lebanon. He writes in the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News):
Now the Obama administration is negotiating a flawed nuclear deal with the Iranian regime that will see Tehran get a windfall of up to $150 billion. With so much cash on hand, Tehran would surely create new Hezbollah franchises elsewhere in the Middle East and order all these radical proxy groups to wage even more wars in the region.

At the very least, Tehran would be eager to give a good boost to its pride and joy—Hezbollah—and help it buy its way out of the problems it is facing in Lebanon now. . .

With this deal, my Lebanon won’t be able to free itself in the foreseeable future from the control of Hezbollah. It will never again be the Switzerland of the Middle East, will never prosper and thrive again like it did in the 1960s and early ’70s. To those who say that this nuclear deal is a recipe for peace, I say that this deal is an invitation for more wars in the Middle East.
• A Christian Science Monitor staff-ed gave a thumbs up to a proposal by the International Crisis Group to de-escalate Temple Mount tensions.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Yoav Limor: Will Islamic State strike at Israel?
– Ron Ben-Yishai: ISIS in Sinai is a serious threat to Israel
– Yossi Melman: Egypt’s losing Sinai war with ISIS
– Boaz Bismuth: Time to eliminate Islamic State
– Michael Oren: Iran deal bad for Israel, U.S. and world
– Steve Huntley: Anti-Israel movement based on fallacies
– Jonathan Tobin: Lawless administration won’t enforce law against Israel boycotts
– Zvi Mazel: Egypt still trying to resolve a complex situation
Featured image: CC BY-SA flickr/Tom Woodward with additions by HonestReporting

Admin Wed 01 Jul 2015, 10:32 pm

50 Killed in Sinai Terror Attacks
Israel Daily News Stream9 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. 50 people were killed in Sinai terror attacks. Casualty figures that don’t distinguish between terrorists and their victims can imply a moral equivalence between terrorists and their victims, but in this case, Reuters says Egyptian officials haven’t offered any breakdown.
With clashes continuing, Israel closed its border crossings with both Egypt and Gaza.
2. Just one day after President Obama signed anti-BDS legislation into law, the State Department announced it will not protect settlements against boycotts. The legislation, according to spokesman John Kirby, “conflates” Israel and the “Israel-controlled territories.” The Times of Israel and Haaretz picked up. The latter writes:
Thus, the effort to strengthen the settlements, supported by AIPAC and other mainstream and right-wing groups and opposed by J-Street and organizations on the left, actually ends up weakening them. The attempt to blot out the differences between a boycott of Israel and of the territories actually highlights them. The boycott of settlements, in effect, has now been officially stamped “kosher” by the State Department.
But Eugene Kontorovich tweets that what’s done is done. (See also his background on the legislation.)
EVKontorovich
Related reading from HonestReporting: State Department Lashes Out Against Anti-BDS Law: By implying that boycotts of the West Bank should not fall under the anti-BDS legislation, the State Department statement may lead to more boycotts of the West Bank and a stronger BDS movement.
3. A victim of yesterday’s drive-by shooting terror attack, Malachi Rosenfeld, was laid to rest after succumbing to his wounds. Thousands of Israelis converged on Kochav HaShachar to pay their final respects to the 26-year-old Rosenfeld. His three friends also hurt in the attack, remain hospitalized.
4. CNN’s Blockade Against Accuracy: Sorry CNN, but the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza is legal under international law.
5. Is the UN Human Rights Council Obsessed with Israel? The New York Times doubts the UN Human Rights Council’s obsession with Israel. HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl clears the air.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Israeli security busted a Hamas terror network in the West Bank. The Jerusalem Post reports the group received orders and money from a Qatar-based Hamas operative.
• Reuters: Islamic State threatened to topple Hamas in Gaza. How seriously should Israel regard the smack talk?
• In his latest move against political rivals, Mahmoud Abbas reportedly fired Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO’s number two man. This comes on the heels of Abbas freezing the assets of an NGO associated with former PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
• Hamas shut down Gaza’s only cell phone provider, Jawwal, over charges of tax-dodging. According to UPI, cellular service in the strip may grind to a halt, but it’s not clear if or when it would come to that.
Jawwal is part of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Telecommunication Group (PalTel), which pays taxes to the PA. As Hamas is a designated terror organization, paying taxes to it could get Jawwal into legal hot water internationally.
• The United Church of Christ voted to divest its holdings in companies operating in the West Bank. The Cleveland-based liberal Protestant church has around 1.1 million members.
• Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar painted a rainbow flag on the security barrier only to have it literally whitewashed by Palestinians with more disapproving views on gay rights. Associated Press picked up on the story, comparing gay rights in Israel and the PA.
Adam Levick
Around the World
• Iranian nuclear talks were extended to July 7. Will negotiators meet the new deadline?
• The number of Islamist operatives in Germany is rising, according to a the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
Hezbollah has 950 active operatives in the Federal Republic, and Hamas has 300. Germany has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. The Merkel administration along with the EU banned Hezbollah’s military wing in 2013, but allows its political wing to operate.
• The upstate New York school district of Pine Bush agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it didn’t respond to complaints of widespread anti-Semitic bullying and harassment.
The students said they were forced to endure anti-Semitic epithets and jokes about the Holocaust, including Nazi salutes, and to retrieve coins from dumpsters. They also said they were subject to physical violence.

School officials responded with “deliberate indifference,” according to the lawsuit.
• The neo-Nazi rally scheduled to be held in the London’s Jewish neighborhood of Golder’s Green this Saturday was moved by police order to central London. More at the Jewish Chronicle.
• The Jerusalem Post takes a closer look at Israel’s “pivot” eastward towards India and China.
Commentary/Analysis
Reda Mansour
Ambassador Reda Mansour
• Worth reading: The Israeli-Druze ambassador to Brazil, Dr. Reda Mansour, got a YNet soapbox to clarify what the Israeli Druze community does and doesn’t want:
We don’t want a single Israeli soldier to set foot in Syria in order to save the Druze over there. We haven’t survived in the Middle East for 1,000 years thanks to external aid and we won’t start now . . .

The Druze don’t want Israel to open up the fence and take in hundreds of thousands of Syrian Druze either. You can rest assured that there won’t be hundreds of thousands of Druze refugees. Just like we didn’t flee Israel in 1948 in view of Palestinian gunmen’s daily attacks on our villages, and just like the Druze in Lebanon didn’t flee in the 1967 civil war after being stormed by militias and foreign armies, the Druze will not flee Suwayda. If they leave, it will be after tens of thousands are killed in battle, and they will return with a counterattack, and the majority of survivors will not move from their homes.

So what do we really want from the State of Israel and from our Jewish friends in it? First of all, we expect empathy. Showing understanding means, for example, halting the medical care being given in Israel to members of Jabhat al-Nusra (an organization affiliated with al-Qaeda), especially after they massacred 20 Druze people in cold blood.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– Raphael Ahren: Will UN Gaza resolution be totally anti-Israel or just mostly so?
– Danny Rubinstein: Third intifada? Not now
– Benny Avni: Arab allies looking anywhere but to America for friendship
– Daniel Gordis: What Americans could learn from Israel’s gun culture

Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Ron Lute with additions by HonestReporting; Mansour via YouTube/Mosaico na TV;

Admin Tue 30 Jun 2015, 11:46 pm

http://honestreporting.com/idns-06302015-four-wounded/
Four Israelis Wounded in Drive-By Shooting Terror Attack
Israel Daily News Stream11 hours ago

Today’s Top Stories
1. Overnight terror attack: Four Israelis injured in a West Bank drive-by shooting near Shvut Rachel. Security officials believe the attack was carried out by a terror cell and not an individual. Malachi Moshe Rosenfeld, one of the four victims, is in critical condition.
The Palestinian Authority has not condemned the attack.
2. The Swedish Gaza ship, Marianne of Gothenburg, arrived in Ashdod. No humanitarian aid was found on board.
Former Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki and European parliament member Ana Miranda were already deported. So were the New Zealand journalists. Israeli Arab MK Basel Ghattas was briefly detained. Knesset lawmakers may strip him of certain parliamentary privileges.

3. Are Israel and Jordan tinkering with the Temple Mount status quo?
4. HR Radio: Media Failures: The Flotilla, A Skewed Headline, and the New York Times: Yarden Frankl discusses the sunk Gaza flotilla, a botched headline, and the New York Times’s latest obsession with Israel. Click below to hear whole interview on the Voice of Israel.
SOUNDCLOUD
Israel and the Palestinians
• Mary McGowan-Davis: Like it or not, according to international law, Israel and Hamas as equivalent.
• After the big ruckus over boycotting Israel, the French telecom giant, Orange, appears to have set up an exit strategy from Israel in the form of a new licensing agreement with it’s Israeli partner. Partner Ltd. They’ll likely part ways within the next two years, and Orange will pay a hefty price. Details at Globes and the Times of Israel. The latter writes:
The new agreement stipulates that Orange will pay up to €90 million to Partner, a sizable chunk of which will be used to help Partner rebrand itself in the wake of Orange’s departure.
• Obama signs anti-BDS bill into law
• Tweet of the day, from StandWithUs:
SEE PAGE for GRAPHIC check where these BDS t-shirts were made say MADE IN ISRAEL
Israel to build 30 km fortified fence along the Jordanian border.
• One year after Operation Protective Edge, Associated Press takes the pulse of Gaza. People are frustrated with Hamas’s entrenched rule, but what’s the alternative?
“Who is not angry about this difficult situation?” Firi said, waiting at a rehabilitation clinic to finally to be fitted with an artificial leg.

But the people of Gaza won’t rise up — some out of fear, he said. “If I say two words, I may go to prison,” he says, as Hamas has little tolerance for dissent and often detains critics. “So we stay silent.”
• I think this International Business Times headline says a lot about the Palestinian culture of victimhood and the standard of pity they set. Even Palestinians?
Mideast Matters
• The Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) describes some of the confidence building measures the US took to woo Iran to the negotiating table.
We’re talking about the US blacklisting Iranian opposition groups, boosting visas for Iranian students, and releasing a number of Iranian nationals imprisoned in the US and Europe for weapons smuggling.
267px-Jordanian_Army• Papers are picking up on a Financial Times report (click via Google News) that Jordan is going to set up a buffer zone in southern Syria to block jihadi advances along the border with the kingdom.
But Jordan’s hand is being forced by the shifting military situation inside Syria, and concerns that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the group known as Isis, could grab territory on its border and threaten the Hashemite state . . .

Although an official no-fly zone is unlikely to be established in support of the Jordanian operation, warnings could be sent to the Assad regime that any attempt to strike at the area by air would be met with a response.

It is also unclear how much co-ordination has so far taken place to prepare southern Syria’s existing brigades of rebel fighters for the operation: senior figures in the southern brigades contacted by the FT said they were unaware of the plans.
Commentary/Analysis
• David Horovitz best articulates the irony of ex-Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki’s participation in the Gaza flotilla:
But on the very weekend that a young Tunisian man, poisoned by benighted zealots, gunned down dozens of innocents in the country Marzouki used to run, here he was sailing the high seas on behalf of an Islamic extremist organization, strategically engaged in poisoning young minds, and bent on dispatching its recruits to carry out murder. Does the president see the appalling irony? Probably not.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Brian Monteith: Auntie Beeb has anti-Israel bias
– Jonathan Tobin: Why flotillas sail to Gaza,not Syria
– Elyakim Haetzni: Palestinians’ words kill too
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Salam Fayyad lacks popular Palestinian support
– Hussein Ibish: Qatar changes course
– Yaakov Amidror: Caving in to Iran
– Elias Groll: Pay no attention to the centrifuge in the corner

Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Australian Broadcasting Corporation with additions by HonestReporting; Jordanian soldier CC BY-SA Wikimedia Commons/Issagm;

Admin Mon 29 Jun 2015, 8:54 pm

Israel Intercepts Gaza Flotilla
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. The IDF intercepted the Gaza-bound Mariane without incident. The Swedish-flagged ship is now being taken to Ashdod. The activists and journalists aboard will be deported. There were local angles for papers in Vancouver, New Zealand, and Sweden.
Two additional boats making their way to the Gaza coast turned back after the interception. It was not clear whether they were returning to their ports in Greece or if they planned to resume their sail to Gaza at a later time.
2. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon acknowledged that Israel has been sending medical aid to Syrian rebels.
“We’ve assisted them under two conditions,” Ya’alon said of the Israeli medical aid to the Syrian rebels, some of whom are presumably fighting with al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. “That they don’t get too close to the border, and that they don’t touch the Druze.”

3. The UN Human Rights Council is now discussing the Schabas report in Geneva. Israel’s considering severing ties with the council, which is expected to vote on adopting the report later this week. More on the Geneva follies at YNet.

4. The NYT Balances the UN Human Rights Council: The New York Times tries to undermine the claim that the UNHRC is “obsessed” with Israel. The facts show otherwise.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Hamas leader confirms rumors of indirect talks with Israel.
• Israel agreed to release hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan next month. Adnan, a leader of Islamic Jihad, stopped eating 56 days ago. No word on whether he’s expected to complete daylight fasting for the rest of Ramadan. According to the Jerusalem Post:
Khader Adnan’s strike had galvanized Palestinians behind a “battle of empty stomachs” against Israeli administrative detentions, and both sides had feared the threat of him dying could hurt a shaky Gaza truce or lead to an upsurge in violence.
If the release goes as planned, this will be the second time Adnan got out of jail free through a prolonged hunger strike. He was re-arrested last year in an Israeli sweep after three Israeli teenagers were abducted and killed last year.
• The president of Cyprus thinks inviting Benyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas to address EU leaders in Brussels might spark some kind of progress in the peace process. The two would likely speak in separate visits. According to Haaretz, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades is currently feeling out European impressions.
• Hamas masses forces on Israeli border, trains for new round of fighting.
• Recently-appointed Foreign Minister director general Dore Gold visited Egypt to discuss regional issues. It’s the first time since 2011 that Israel has sent a director-general there. Last week, Egypt appointed a new ambassador to Israel.
• Hamas showed off for Iranian TV what it claims is a “new” 3.5 km terror tunnel stretching into Israel.
From the footage aired on the news network, it was not clear if the tunnel was in fact new or if the segment inside the tunnel was filmed before the 50-day conflict last summer and repackaged.
Alalam
• YNet looks at ongoing Palestinian vandalism at the Mount of Olives cemetery.
• Palestinian terror continues to boil.
– Palestinian stabbed Israeli soldier near Rachel’s Tomb.
– Soldiers catch Palestinian with rifle trying to cross the security fence.
– 15-year-old Palestinian girl caught trying to smuggle rifle into Jerusalem.
– Israeli ambulance hit by gunfire in West Bank.
Around the World
• Worth reading: The BBC takes the pulse of Israeli attitudes towards Iran and the nuclear talks.
• Greece’s imploding finances will most likely not directly impact Israel. But as the fallout ripples through the international economy, indirect effects will reach the Jewish state.
• Hezbollah man pleads guilty in Cyprus bombing plot.
• Jewish institutions in Belgium will receive 4 million euros from the government to boost security.
• Amazon and eBay crack down on Confederate flags, but leave swastikas.
Paris• Paris Jews to YNet: If you’re pro-Israel in France, you’re finished . . .
The young Jews we met paint a complex picture: They are more careful about displaying their Jewish identity, and fear anti-Semitic incidents and terror attacks. Some believe that immigration to Israel or the United States is the solution. Others believe that this would only reward the terrorists.

The increase in interest in Aliyah to Israel is clearly reflected in the statistics.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Dan Meridor: Could Israel partner with Arabs against Iran?
– Aharon Lapidot: Protective Edge: Soldiers under fire
– Yossi Beilin: Postponing Iran talks deadline – a very bad idea
– Ray Takeyh: The payoff for Iran
– Claudia Rosett: Nuclear bargains and State Dept. backlogs
– Michael Herzog: A dangerous deal that legitimizes Iran’s nuclear status (click via Google News)
• Last, but not least, Fisk’s being Fisk again.

Featured image: CC BY Terje Skjerdal via flickr with additions by HonestReporting; tunnel via YouTube/Alalam News; Paris CC BY-NC-ND flickr/nebojsa mladjenovic;

Admin Sun 28 Jun 2015, 10:27 pm

Islamic Terror Strikes France, Tunisia, and Kuwait
Israel Daily News Stream9 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Islamic terrorists struck France, Tunisia, and Kuwait this weekend, killing a combined 66 people. The French suspect, Yassin Salhi, was allegedly involved in an anti-Semitic attack in 2012.
2. As the deadline for the Iranian nuclear talks ticks down to June 30, press reports say negotiators will indeed stay past the date. Significant obstacles remain for negotiators in Vienna, especially inspections, sanctions relief, and political challenges from key players. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, flew back to Tehran for instructions and is expected to return on Monday.
ABC News and NBC News lay out where the talks stand. So does Matt Lee, in far fewer words.
Matt Lee
3. According to Haaretz, the Gaza flotilla is down to one ship after Greek authorities ordered two of the boats to turn back for undisclosed reading. The Marianne, a Swedish vessel, is expected to reach Gaza’s coast on Monday night or Sunday morning.
4. Your Weekend Headline Fail: Either AFP doesn’t take headline writing very seriously, or someone at this French wire services wants to demonize Israel.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Times of Israel picked up on New Zealand media reports on Wellington’s latest efforts to push Mideast peace forward.
• To Israeli ire, the Vatican signed a formal treaty with “the state of Palestine.” New York Times coverage.
• Lt. Col. Peter Lerner clears the air about today’s sirens in the Golan.
Peter Lerner
• It would be one thing if Dutch Socialists shot down a feel-good sister city arrangement between Amsterdam and a settlement. But members of the Amsterdam city council blocked an effort to twin the Dutch capital with Tel Aviv, which is very much inside the Green Line. The JTA adds that the Socialists rejected a compromise twinning Amsterdam with Tel Aviv and Ramallah.
• Prisoner dies in PA police custody in Bethlehem
• Turkey condemned Israel’s deportation of several Turkish journalists and NGO workers who were denied entry into Israel at Ben Gurion Airport. Reuters explains why Israel turned away seven of the nine Turks:
An official from Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, said those denied entry were suspected of having links to Hamas . . .
• Here we go again: Workers at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs are going to start work sanctions to protest poor pay and working conditions. According to YNet, here’s what this means for you:
Foreign Ministry employees in Israel and abroad were instructed by the union to stop sending communications, issuing passports, offering political and administrative assistance, and more.
• Gaza may be without cellular phone service after Hamas moved against the strip’s only mobile phone service was accused of tax evasion.
• Truth is stranger than The Onion. I’m not making this up.
Variety
Mideast Matters
• Iranian-Americans set up lobbying arm to counter pro-Israel groups
• The US State Department issued its annual report on human rights around the world. Iran doesn’t come out looking so good. More at the Washington Post.
• How Iranian oil tankers keep Syria’s war machine alive
New Bloomberg analysis of tanker movement suggests Iran has sent about 10 million barrels of crude to Syria so far this year—or about 60,000 barrels a day. With oil prices averaging $59 a barrel over the past six months, that’s about $600 million in aid since January.
• The threat of Iranian missiles is proving to be a windfall for US defense contractors. Foreign Policy reports that the Gulf States are opening their wallets, especially for missile defense systems.
• The Christian Science Monitor looks at the impact of a nuclear deal on world oil prices.
• Looks like The Guardian discovered terror. Funny how the T-word’s never used when Israelis are victims . . .
The Guardian
Commentary/Analysis
• Assad and Hezbollah are inciting the Golan Druze, hoping an incident will draw Israel into the Syrian civil war. Although Golan Druze ambushed an IDF ambulance and lynched an injured Syrian, Israel was smart enough to stay out, argues Tony Badran.
• Over at The Guardian, Saeb Erekat whines that the EU is breaking its own rules by maintaining good relations with Israel.
• Former European Parliament member Struan Stevenson on Iran developing inter-continental ballistic missiles, which the White House conceded last year should be left out of a nuclear deal:
History has repeatedly demonstrated that countries that wish to undertake the vast expense and risk the international criticism of developing intercontinental ballistic missiles do so because they intend to arm their missiles with nuclear warheads and become nuclear powers. The Iranian missile programme makes no military, political or economic sense unless viewed in this context. Signing a nuclear pact with Iran on 30th June would therefore be a major mistake, which could have fatal consequences for countries in the zone and for world peace.

• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend . . .
– Robert Fulford: What’s Israel supposed to do? Ask the UN for help?
– Yonah Bob: PA war crimes charges aren’t really about Gaza
– Giora Eiland: Being right about the Gaza war report isn’t enough
– Melanie Phillips: Time to call out NGOs aiding UNs Israel pogrom
– Benny Avni: UN charges Israel with war crimes — is the US next?
– David Makovsky: The key to averting another Gaza war? Egypt
– Bassam Tawil: Behind the French “peace initiative”
– Guy Bechor: Is France betraying Israel in favor of Qatar?
– Calev Myers: Expose UNRWA’s absurdity
– James Acton: Iran needs to come clean with what, not why
– Ray Takeyh: How to Promote Human Rights in Iran

Image: CC BY flickr/Mo Riza; typewriter CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Allen Skyy

Admin Thu 25 Jun 2015, 9:13 pm

Aerial Drone From Gaza Crashes in Israel
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Could Israel hack Hezbollah’s rockets?
2. The US Senate passed legislation against efforts to boycott Israel. The language was piggybacked onto the Trade Promotion Authority legislation, which the White House is expected to sign into law. See Times of Israel coverage, plus the Jerusalem Post‘s background.
3. Just before this roundup was published, an aerial drone from Gaza crashed in Israel near the border; IDF engineers retrieved the UAV for further analysis.
4. BDS Has Only One Weapon: The more people see Israel as a force for good in the world, the less susceptible they’ll be to the boycott movement’s effort to turn the world against it.
Israel and the Palestinians
ship to gaza• It’s refreshing to see a reporter ask a straight question to a politician, who gives a frank answer. Here’s the key question posed by Washington Post reporter Ruth Eglash to Israeli-Arab Knesset member Basel Ghattas about his participation in the Gaza flotilla.
Q: There has been criticism that this is a political action, not a humanitarian one. Can you explain what the goals of this flotilla are?

A: This is a nonviolent political action aimed at bringing attention to the blockade.
• Police manhunt for two illegal Palestinian workers who beat an Israeli farmer to death. David Bar, of Moshav Pedaya near Rehovot, was 70.
• Worth reading: Reporter Dan Ephron really did his homework with an in-depth and frank look at the IDF’s controversial Hannibal directive. Published in Politico, Ephron certainly sheds more light on army tactics than that UN report everyone’s talking about.
To the military in the United States and around the world, Israel serves as a kind of laboratory for battle tactics, especially those involving counterinsurgency. Its wars with guerrilla groups like Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah—four in the past nine years—are pored over for the lessons they hold and the questions they raise. The story of Hadar Goldin raises one question in particular: How far should a modern military go to prevent one of its own from being captured? . . .

Now, nearly a year later, Israeli military lawyers are trying to determine if the Hannibal procedure led soldiers to commit a war crime. The lawyers have a particularly delicate task. Ordering a criminal investigation would put them at odds with the institution they serve. Not ordering one might open the door to a probe by the International Criminal Court.
Operation Protective Edge
Israeli forces in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge
• UN development official to AP: At it’s current pace, Gaza reconstruction will take 30 years because Hamas can’t be trusted not to pilfer cement for terror tunnels because of the nasty Israeli blockade.
• Israel to Jordanian media: ‘Stop praising attacks on Israelis’
• Here’s a fleeting ray of sanity at Turtle Bay: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the Gaza flotilla isn’t helpful.
• Nice to see the New York Times conceding that Tel Aviv is not the capital of Israel. This Dia Hadid dispatch was corrected by the time I saw it (see the second paragraph), but there’s a footprint of the lousy Tel Aviv synecdoche on the paper’s Mideast page.
NY Times Mideast page
• Foreign investment in Israel dropped 50 percent in 2014. Experts sharing their conjecture with YNet attributed this primarily to the Gaza war, weak international economic growth which led to other countries seeing similar declines, and, possibly too, the boycott movement against Israel.
Around the World
• Papers picked up on an open letter signed by a number of ex Obama administration officials and diplomats against the unfolding Iranian nuclear deal. More at Reuters.
• Brazilian crooners won’t bend to BDS
• Holocaust memorial in Kiev defaced with swastikas
Commentary/Analysis
• Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, slammed the UN’s Gaza report in a New York Times op-ed:
The report is characterized by a lack of understanding of warfare. That is hardly surprising. Judge Davis admitted, when I testified before her in February, that the commission, though investigating a war, had no military expertise. Perhaps that is why no attempt has been made to judge Israeli military operations against the practices of other armies. Without such international benchmarks, the report’s findings are meaningless.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Stephen Huntley: The latest bit of nonsense from the UN on Israel
– Irit Kohn: Faced with criminal tactics, Israel abided by laws of armed conflict
– Jonathan Tobin: It’s ot France, but an Obama diktat that Israel fears
– Zvi Barel: While world finalizes Iran deal, Israel bogged down by UN report
– Bernard-Henri Levy: A yellow star for the Jewish state?
– Washington Post: US shouldn’t be swayed by Khamenei’s nuclear threats
– Wall St. Journal: The UN’s Israel inquisition (staff-ed, click via Google News)

Featured image: CC BY flickr/Kathleen Conklin with additions by HonestReporting; soldiers CC BY-NC flickr/Israel Defense Forces;

Admin Wed 24 Jun 2015, 5:13 pm

The UN’s Gaza Report: Aftermath and Analysis
Israel Daily News Stream1 day ago
IDNS-macbook-hammock-770x400
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel and the mainstream media react to the UN report on the Gaza war. For more on the fallout and commentary see below.
2. Haaretz: In a secret meeting in Rome, Israeli and Turkish officials renewed reconciliation talks. Ties between Jerusalem and Ankara broke down in 2010 after the Mavi Marmara incident.
It’s hard to tell where this might go. Turkey’s approach to Israel may be softening due to the ruling AK Party losing its outright parliamentary majority. Ironically, the talks are coming just ahead of another Gaza flotilla soon to depart from Greece.
3. Israeli Druze ambushed another IDF ambulance ferrying injured Syrian rebels, killing one, and injuring the other. Two other Israeli soldiers were also hurt in the attack.
The Druze believe the Syrian rebels being treated in Israel may be from the Al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, which is threatening Syrian Druze communities. The IDF denied that the Syrians were jihadists. It’s the second Druze attack on an ambulance in the last 24 hours. See YNet and Times of Israel coverage. Meanwhile, local Druze leaders say Lebanese terrorist Samir Quntar’s inciting Golan Druze to violence.
And Syria’s reaction to the lynching?
Reuters
4. The Druze in the News: A misconception about the Druze, the Jews, and Israel gets cleared up.
5. HR Radio: “Shooting Teenagers” and Other Hostile Headlines: HonestReporting’s Yarden Frankl discussed coverage of the Schabas report and other media fails. Click below to hear the full interview on the Voice of Israel.
Schabas Report: The Fallout and Commentary
• Israel to launch diplomatic and P.R. campaign against the UN Human Rights Council’s eventual vote on adopting the Schabas report. YNet explains what’s in store and what’s at stake.
Behind the scene talks with key players in the UNHRC have already begun, but if adopted by the council the report will be passed onto the UN General Assembly, as occurred with the infamous Goldstone Report in wake of a previous Gaza conflict in 2009, or Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will be asked directly to monitor its implementation.
The council is scheduled to discuss the report next week. But see Raphael Ahren‘s take on how far the Schabas report is likely to go and why it’s unlikely to get any Israelis dragged off to the International Criminal Court.
• The Jerusalem Post‘s legal affairs correspondent, Yonah Bob, breaks down the Schabas report. In a separate piece, he explains why the Schabas report is more sophisticated than the Goldstone report.
. . . whereas the International Criminal Court in 2008- 9 was just a distant threat, it now sees the Palestinians as having a state that can officially file war crimes complaints and is deep into a preliminary examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• “This is my truth”: IDF soldiers react to war crime accusations
• Jeffrey Robbins is a former US delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission.
Jeffrey Robbins
• Memo to the New York Times: I’m not bothered that your staff-ed holds Israel to a higher standard than Hamas, but how is Israel supposed to defend itself from people you acknowledge don’t follow international law?
It is unrealistic to expect Hamas, which the United States and other countries consider a terrorist group, to comply with international law or police itself. But Israel has a duty, and should have the desire, to adjust its military policies to avoid civilian casualties and hold those who failed to do so accountable.
Other papers weighing in with staff-eds include the National Post, New York Daily News, and The Guardian.
• Here’s more commentary on the Schabas report I’m reading . . .
– Jonathan Tobin: UN Gaza war report leaves no room for Israeli self-defense
– Ron Ben-Yishai: UN report gives Hezbollah a green light
– Gabi Siboni: Did the UN panel not know about the Hamas victim doctrine?
– Raphael Ahren: Softer Gaza accusations may be more damaging to Israel
– Dan Margalit: No comparison between the IDF and Hamas
– Mitch Ginsburg: UN report is ignorant of military realities.
– Avi Issacharoff: Gaza report reveals UN cluelessness
– Boaz Bismuth: The UN Council for the Encouragement of Terrorism
Mideast Matters
• More pressure on the Druze: The Jerusalem Post picked up on Arab reports that “eight Islamist groups active near Israel’s border in southern Syria have united into one bloc.”
• Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog discussed the Iranian threat with the Daily Telegraph.
If the US Administration hoped that Mr Herzog might dilute Israel’s visceral suspicion of an imminent nuclear deal with Iran, however, then he seems likely to disappoint.
• Are peacekeepers from UNIFIL sexually exploiting women in Southern Lebanon?
• SANA, the official news service of the Syrian government, is utterly deluded. This tweet is real.
SANA English
• Reuters reports Egypt’s digging a trench near the Gaza border to prevent smuggling.
Once the trench is dug, no vehicle or person will be able to pass except through the trench.
• I’ll let this headline speak for itself:
Iran’s Forces and U.S. Share a Base in Iraq
• WikiLeaks memos show Saudis use the media to manipulate students and “enlighten” consumers
Around the World
• Sign of the times? Armed French soldiers were photographed in Paris protecting a Jewish wedding. Algemeiner has the back story on the photos Australian journalist Greg Dyett posted on Twitter.
Greg Dyett
Commentary/Analysis
• The Druze peril is giving Israeli-Druze Professor Yakub Halabi a deeper appreciation of Zionism:
First, I must admit that when seeing the calamity of minorities such as the Yazidis, Kurds, Christians and Druze in Syria and Iraq, I become more understanding of Zionism as the antidote to anti-Semitism. Minorities, unfortunately, are the abandoned children of international politics, used by states as pawns for their own interests. Minorities hence are like orphans: they reluctantly seek adoption by whoever might be able to protect them.
• Terrific piece on reporting as propaganda and how autocratic governments make reporters self-censor news. Much of this is about Jason Rezaian’s trial in Iran and blinkered NY Times photo essay from North Korea, but Stephens also ties in the unwritten rules of covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one CNN executive’s blast from the past. Stephens writes in the Wall St. Journal (click via Google News):
But the Post apparently thought it could play it safe, and last December Post reporters Joby Warrick and Carol Morello explained why. “Although other journalists have been arrested in Iran, Rezaian did not expect that he would be targeted, said his mother,” the Post noted.

“Rezaian had taken great care not to touch any of the tripwires that had gotten other journalists in trouble with Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the agency that grants credentials to foreign journalists. ‘He knew about the high-profile cases where people had broken the rules,’ she said. ‘He followed the rules.’ ”

Tripwires? Rules? I could be mistaken, but I don’t think I’ve seen the Post spell out what those rules are, so that readers can judge for themselves whether reports datelined Tehran are censored, self-censored, or genuinely comprehensive and unfiltered.
• A Wall St. Journal staff-ed (click via Google News) worries that the State Department will find evidence of Iran cheating on a nuclear agreement, “but fail to act out of bureaucratic neglect—or a political desire to look the other way.” It cites previous failures at Foggy Bottom to provide timely updates to Congress on Iranian, North Korean, and Syrian activities, as well as Russian violations of a 1987 treaty eliminating intermediate range nuclear missiles.
Arms control is an obsession in which belief is inversely proportional to evidence of success, and so it is with this Iran deal. How is the U.S. supposed to enforce an Iran deal when the State Department would rather cover up an adversary’s deceit than face the failure of U.S. diplomacy?
• I’m also reading today . . .
– Lyn Julius: Why Jewish Refugees are the correct response to BDS
– Shimon Shiffer: 10 years since Gaza pullout: Myths vs. reality
– Elliott Abrams: The PA’s nasty little war with Salam Fayyad
– Alan Kuperman: Breakout time and the Iran deal’s fatal flaw
– Nour Samaha: Druze trapped in the crosshairs of war
Featured image: CC BY-SA flickr/Tom Woodward with additions by HonestReporting

Will “Moral Minority” Reject UN’s Gaza Report?
Israel Daily News Stream3 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israeli officials concede they can’t stop the UN Human Rights Council from adopting the Schabas report, so they’re focusing on getting a “moral minority” of democracies to vote against it and blunt its legitimacy. More at Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post. The latter adds:
In general, the sense in Jerusalem is that the report issued Monday – which charged that both Israel and the Palestinians may have been guilty of war crimes – attracted a great deal less attention abroad than the Goldstone Report.
Meanwhile, US opposes bringing the report to the Security Council.
Vittorio Arrigoni
2. A Palestinian Salafist involved in the kidnap and murder of an Italian activist escaped from Gaza to join Islamic State in Syria. Mahmoud al-Salfiti was on leave from a Hamas prison to visit family during Ramadan.
It’s not yet clear whether he left Gaza through a tunnel or by using a false identity at the Rafah crossing, which Egypt re-opened for several days. Vittorio Arrigoni, who arrived in Gaza on a flotilla, was killed in 2011.
3. Nuclear cooperation with Iran is a powerful carrot for the West dangle. But does this Associated Press scoop describe something going too far?
The United States and other nations negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran are ready to offer high-tech reactors and other state-of-the-art equipment to Tehran if it agrees to crimp programs that can make atomic arms, according to a confidential document obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press . . .

The West has always held out the prospect of providing Iran peaceful nuclear technology in the nearly decade-long international diplomatic effort designed to reduce Tehran’s potential ability to make nuclear weapons. But the scope of the help now being offered in the draft may displease U.S. congressional critics who already argue that Washington has offered too many concessions at the negotiations.
4. Mad Mads Feted in The Guardian: The Guardian promotes radical Marxist anti-Israel propagandist, Dr. Mads Gilbert’s new book.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Mary McGowan Davis, who led the UN’s inquiry after William Schabas stepped down, discussed the report with Haaretz. Asked about the moral equivalence the report drew between Israel and Hamas:
“We were not in charge of conducting a moral investigation but to check if the international law was violated . . . The law puts them on the same level, and we follow the law.”
Her remarks about Israel bombing civilian areas drew a sharp response from David Bernstein.
Mary McGowan Davis
Judge Mary McGowan Davis
• An IAF air strike destroyed a rocket launcher in Gaza after a rocket was fired at Israel last night. The rocket landed in an open area causing no casualties or damage. Israel also responded by cancelling entry permits to 500 Gazans to visit the Temple Mount during Ramadan.
• PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah is leading talks with Hamas on a new unity government that will have “factional leaders replacing independent technocrats.” More at Maan News.
• A study found that German school books found that Israel is portrayed “as an aggressive, warlike country while ignoring that the Jewish state is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East.” The Jerusalem Post writes:
“Pupils connect Israel with a warmongering society,” said Simone Lässig, director of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research.
Mideast Matters
• For Egypt, TV Show’s Shocking Twist Is Its Sympathetic Jews
• Dozens of Druze recruits defected en masse from the Syrian army while a convoy carrying more was blocked from leaving the Suweida province. It seems Bashar Assad’s officers broke a promise that the Druze recruits would only serve in Suweida, their home province.
• AFP describes the latest sick, sick, sick Islamic State execution video. It’s apparently filmed in Iraq. Do you really want people like this setting up shop in the Syrian Golan too? And in another Syrian town, two children were reportedly crucified for breaking the fast of Ramadan.
Commentary/Analysis
Mohammed Dahlan
• Why are Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan trying to outdo each other sponsoring mass weddings? Danny Rubinstein explains that the Palestinian “wedding war” highlights the problem of Palestinian succession.
If succession comes down to Dahlan and the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, things could get messy for Israel.
• Worth reading: Over at Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes and Yishai Schwartz impressively unpack the Schabas report:
In a more rigorous report, Hamas’s tactics would be the fundamental lens through which Israeli conduct got analyzed. When one side systematically violates the rules designed to protect civilians, after all, and a lot of civilians then get killed, those systematic violations have to be central to the inquiry into the reasons for those civilian deaths. In this report, those systematic violations are an afterthought. And somewhat shockingly—and very tellingly—they are also entirely absent from the report’s “conclusions and recommendations.”

The report’s main act, by contrast, is the evaluation of Israeli targeting decisions, evaluated in almost total isolation from the context of Hamas’s behavior
• Diana Moukalled warns Arabs not to let Bashar Assad get away with what I’ll call “Druzewashing.” (Takfirist, as Moukalled uses it, refers to radical Islamists.)
We must not make the mistake of undermining the threat which takfirists pose to minorities. However, one should not forget the risk posed by authoritarian regimes, like the Ba’athists in Syria, who use minorities as a means to protect themselves. The Syrian regime’s exploitation of these minorities threatens the latter’s existence just as much as the takfirists do. This is not to mention that the Syrian regime has always used scaremongering over takfirism to gain legitimacy.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– David Horovitz: Shame on you, Mary McGowan Davis
– Nahum Barnea: What war crimes did Israel commit in Gaza?
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Israel must take action to reduce international damage
– Ian O’Doherty: Boycott of Tel Aviv dance festival shows the face of real bigotry
– Clifford May: How to exacerbate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
– Avi Issacharoff: Druze mob’s rash attack may have doomed Syrian cousins
– Aaron David Miller: Nuclear deal unlikely to transform Iranian regime
• Lastly, a Chicago Sun-Times staff-ed weighed in on the Schabas report, while the French peace initiative got a thumbs up from an Irish Times staff-ed.
Featured image: CC BY-SA flickr/Rob Hurson with additions by HonestReporting; Arrigoni via YouTube/Al Jazeera English; McGowan Davis via YouTube/GNews; Dahlan CC BY-NC-SA flickr/World Economic Forum;

Admin Tue 23 Jun 2015, 12:00 am

UN Releases Schabas Report, Israel Mulls Response
Today’s Top Stories
1. The UN released the full Schabas report on the Gaza war. The report itself will be formally presented to the UN Human Rights Council. As expected, Israel took harsh criticism. The Palestinians didn’t come out clean either. Israel rejected the report, as did Hamas.
I wonder if media coverage will reflect a certain moral equivalence between the IDF and Hamas. This is the report’s key sentence setting the tone for the headlines:
The commission was able to gather substantial information pointing to serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law by Israel and by Palestinian armed groups.
See below for early reactions. Now that the report’s out, here are 3 media angles to beware of.
UN-schabas-IDF-770x400
2. UN Watch: Leaked Saudi diplomatic cables indicate that the Saudis and Russians traded votes and cash to assure each other seats on the UN Human Rights Council. This is the same UN Human Rights Council due to self-righteously discuss the Schabas report next week.
3. In the Golan village of Horfish, Israeli Druze attacked an IDF ambulance carrying an injured Syrian rebel. Haaretz reports that the Druze demanded that the army check whether the injured Syrian was a member of one of the rebel groups threatening Syrian Druze.
4. Media Headline Fails as Israeli Policeman Stabbed: Why is a Palestinian shot while an Israeli is “reportedly” stabbed in the same incident?
Israel and the Palestinians
• The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced the Schabas report as “politically motivated and morally flawed from the outset.” Cabinet ministers were ordered not to discuss the report.
• Yesterday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius visited Jerusalem and Ramallah. Fabius told reporters the US is “more open than ever before” to allowing a Security Council resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Fabius also that Abbas told him that a PA national unity government would only include parties recognizing Israel. Details at Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post.
• Is the PA curtailing civil society? Mahmoud Abbas turning on ex-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad? The Times of Israel reports a non-governmental organization started by Fayyad, had its assets confiscated by the PA. And Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh tweeted this:
Khaled Abu Toameh
• YNet; Palestinian rock throwing in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank seems to be rising since Ramadan began on Thursday.
• Arab MK Basel Ghattas told the Jerusalem Post he’s joining the Gaza flotilla while fellow MK Haneen Zoabi expressed interest.
Ghattas said that the Marianne av Göteborg trawler would likely depart from Athens in the next day or two and that he does not expect any violence, as “we activists decided not to resist violently.” Three or four other ships have plans to join the Gaza “flotilla,” but only the Marianne av Göteborg is currently approaching Israel.
The IDF is monitoring the flotilla‘s progress.
• Egypt appointed a new ambassador to Israel. Hazem Khairat replaces the current ambassador, Atef Salem el-Ahl. Ambassador Salem hasn’t returned to Egypt’s embassy in Tel Aviv since 2012, when he was withdrawn in protest to Operation Pillar of Defense. According to YNet, Khairat will take up his new post in September.
• Gotta respect Israeli journalist Miri Michaeli for standing her ground when pro-Palestinian activists hollering slogans and waving flags tried to disturb her live stand up from London. The backstory’s at Algemeiner while the video’s on Facebook.
Michaeli was covering a conference on fighting BDS at the London School of Economics. Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog and former IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz were among the speakers (Mofaz arrived with diplomatic escort to prevent an attempt to arrest him, but that’s a separate story.) Michaeli’s tweet says, “Always fun to report from the London School of Economics.”
Miri Michaeli
• According to Israeli media reports, Germany indirectly funds an anti-Israel church group that backs BDS.
• Associated Press looks at Israel and Hamas as frenemies.
• Thumbs up to the Christian Science Monitor’s in-depth look at the success of Israeli irrigation techniques with an impressive cover story, sidebar, and commentary.
• Israeli family from Sakhnin feared to have joined ISIS
Reactions to the Schabas Report
• The BBC acknowledged why William Schabas resigned as head of the inquiry.
The head of the inquiry, William Schabas, quit part-way through amid Israeli allegations of bias, acknowledging he had previously done work for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
• Here are a four tweets that had my antennae twitching.
Eugene Kontorovich
Hillel Neuer
Shimrit Meir
Lenny Ben-David
Around the World
• India‘s boosting security as intelligence agencies warn of terror threat against Israelis.
• Top rebel leader accuses Jews of masterminding Ukrainian revolution.
• Iranian lawmakers advanced a bill banning nuclear inspectors from military sites. AP coverage.
• The BBC’s utterly riddled with liberal bias and groupthink, but don’t take my word for it. The Times of London published excerpts from the memoirs of Roger Mosey, a former editorial director. Here’s the overview story, one of the excerpts elaborating on the aforementioned bias and groupthink, and a staff-ed which sums up the problem:
He describes a news management system inclined to distort the news rather than report it; a delusional notion of the BBC’s typical local radio listener; and a “liberal-defensive” default mindset that bears scant relation to the real world. Publication of the memoir may not be welcomed in the corporation’s upper reaches as it prepares to defend the licence fee in a climate of continuing austerity, but this insider’s view is all the more timely and important for that.
Commentary/Analysis
PalUK• MK Yair Lapid‘s message to the UK: Don’t let your love of the underdog blind you to Hamas:
You always favour the underdog — any underdog. They seem to be right because they are weak, and in the best tradition of British gallantry you want to protect them and hit the stronger party over the head with your umbrella.

The strong, in our case, is Israel. We have the bad luck of being the stronger side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which causes many in Britain to prefer the other side. They like themselves much more when they stand by the weak Palestinians and miss the fact that being weak is not the same as being just . . .

Support for the underdog is being translated into support for boycotts of Israel. Most people don’t know that behind the campaign is the most distorted version of Islam, hidden by heavy financial backing from Iran and the Gulf States. Maybe now is the time for Britain to act according to the second of the great British traditions: fair play.
• I couldn’t agree more with James West. Best coverage of breaking news with national repercussions is always in the local paper because they know their community better than the network correspondents who parachute in. You can see the nuance and sensitivity of the Charleston Post & Courier.
From Boston to Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston, one thing has become crystal clear: To get real reporting—and to get it fast—you’ve got to switch off cable and go local. It’s here you’ll find the scoops, the sense of place, the authentic compassion; it’s here you can avoid the predictable blather from a candidate, or pundit, or hack filling airtime. It’s here you’ll find out what’s really happening to a particular group of Americans who have just been shoved into a tragic spotlight. Turn off the TV and Google the local paper on your phone. Find their Twitter feed. Follow their journalists.
• I’m also reading:
– Jeff Robbins: UN beats familiar anti-Israel drum
– Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinians’ real strategy
– Dan Margalit: Block the flotilla of terror
– Alan Johnson: Israel’s allies cannot defeat BDS alone – we need Israel’s help

Featured image: CC BY flickr/Poster Boy with additions by HonestReporting; Schabas CC BY-NC flickr/Israel Defense Forces and Schabas via YouTube/RobertHJacksonCenter with modifications CC BY-SA HonestReporting; Palestinian flag CC BY flickr/Nicolas Raymond; UK flag CC BY flickr/Nicolas Raymond;

Admin Sun 21 Jun 2015, 10:33 pm

One Israeli Killed, Another on Life Support After Terror Attacks
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israeli police are still searching for the Palestinian who shot and killed an Israeli man in a Friday terror attack. Danny Gonen, of Lod was killed while hiking to a spring in the West Bank, near the community of Dolev. His friend, Netanel Hadad, who was wounded in the attack, recounted the incident to YNet.
Gonen was laid to rest Saturday night. More at the Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel.
Israeli officials were especially angered by the UN’s “balanced response” to the terror, calling “on all sides to exercise the utmost restraint.”
Danny Gonen
2. An Israeli border policeman is on life-support after being stabbed by a Palestinian in Jerusalem this morning, at the Old City’s Damascus Gate. He managed to shoot his attacker — an 18-year-old, who succumbed to his wounds. Haaretz coverage. Meanwhile, Avi Issacharoff wonders whether this was pre-planned, or opportunistic.
3. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is visiting Jerusalem and Ramallah today. to push his country’s peace initiative. Ahead of today’s meeting, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said he would oppose “international dictates” on the Mideast peace process. The foreign minister responded urging Israelis not to prejudge the French proposal. Netanyahu and Fabius are scheduled to meet this evening.
4. Bad Headline, Worse Picture: The headline makes this article misleading, but it’s the picture that really lies.

Israel and the Palestinians
• Former IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz arrived in London amid drama and intrigue described by YNet. Palestinians still seek the arrest of Israelis on war crimes charges, and Britain says it can’t guarantee immunity to Citizen Mofaz. I wonder if there’s a plan for leaving Britain . . .
Amichai Stein
• A day after Gonen’s death, a Palestinian woman driving near Dolev was hurt by stone throwers. Gotta credit AFP for noting this point:
Palestinians said Saturday’s incident could have been an act of revenge by settlers for Gonen’s death, although the stones could also have been thrown by Palestinians mistaking the woman’s vehicle for an Israeli one.
• Where’s the coverage? I found zero coverage of the fatal Dolev attack on the CNN, NPR, and BBC web sites, whhile the Times of London gave it one sentence hastily tacked to the bottom of a report about Hebron shops being allowed to reopen. If it bleeds, it leads, right?
• Still trying to wrap your head around Israel and Hamas as frenemies? The Christian Science Monitor and NPR take a closer look at what’s happening to Israeli-Hamas “ties.”
• YNet: Israeli students traveling abroad in youth delegations will receive a 10-hour crash course in public diplomacy.
• Former ambassador Michael Oren continues making waves ahead of the release of his book on Israel-US ties. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Oren rips the White House’s argument that the Iranians are rational actors. In a separate piece for Foreign Policy, he examines President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world.
• Thumbs up to NPR for looking at freedom of expression in the Palestinian Authority. PA police don’t like everything Palestinians post on Facebook.
• Lebanese man to stand trial in Cyprus over alleged Hezbollah bomb plot. Proceedings to begin June 29.
• Worth listening: The BBC recounts the terrifying end of Libya’s Jewish community in the weeks after the Six Day War.
Libyan Jews
Libyan Jews returning to Tripoli from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, 1945.
• Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs removed a video poking fun at the foreign press. Haaretz explains:
“The aim of the video was to illustrate Hamas’ crimes, and once it was interpreted otherwise it was decided to remove it,” Ministry Spokesman Immanuel Nachshon said Sunday, after Foreign Ministry Director Dori Gold ordered the English-language short off the ministry’s website.
BDS Battles
• Publix supermarket chain investigating BDS vandalism of Jewish products at a Miami store after stickers were attached to a number of Jewish products. I say Jewish, because Kedem products aren’t made in Israel. Seems like the boycotters are ignorant at best, or anti-Semitic at worst.
The supermarket’s announcement came after a photo of a Kedem product apparently from a North Miami Beach store was posted to Twitter, with a mock-up “Occupation Facts” sticker pasted on the front. Kedem is a Kosher foods product, but it is not Israeli.
• NY State Assembly condemns BDS
• Boycotters are trying to trip up an Irish dance festival due to take place in Tel Aviv this August. But London’s Sunday Times reports the organizers aren’t toeing the Irish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign’s line:
“With due respect to the genuine motives of the IPSC, I will not be taking part in the boycott,” he said. “To a lesser extent, there is a similar campaign afoot to have us boycott feiseanna in Russia because of the actions of President Putin in Crimea and Ukraine. Once we travel down that route, where will we draw a line?”
Iranian Atomic Urgency
atom• The State Department’s annual report on terror (388 pages of pdf joy) couldn’t whitewash Iranian support for international terror. The report also cited Hamas and Hezbollah activities. The Times of Israel rounded up key take-aways
In 2014, Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), its Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and Tehran’s ally Hizballah, which remained a significant threat to the stability of Lebanon and the broader region.
Cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz‘s take was the most-quoted Israeli response I saw.
The minister said the report’s conclusions “dealt a death knell” to “the American delusion, according to which an easing of sanctions as part of an interim nuclear treaty would lead to a moderation of its position.”

“That’s why the report should serve as a warning sign for anyone who thinks Iran will moderate its behavior after a final-status nuclear treaty,” he said.
• The White House may appoint a “czar” to oversee implementation and enforcement of a nuclear deal with Iran. According to Politico:
It’s an idea that some argue is smart — even crucial — because of the multiple agencies, countries and international bodies that will be involved in the deal.
• Russia and Riyadh signed a nuclear cooperation deal. According to Reuters, the Russians will build 16 nuclear reactors. Abdulrahman al-Rashed notes that the deal comes at a time when the US and Europe are boycotting and sanctioning Russia over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.
Around the World
• This is bizarre: According to Hezbollah,a loud explosion heard in the Bekaa Valley was an Israeli air strike on one of its own crashed drones. But the Daily Star adds this contradictory information:
However, photos of the reported drone published on media websites show Cyrillic script on a piece of the wreckage, indicating that the drone may have been manufactured either in Russia or Eastern Europe.
• Done toying with British Muslim activist Asghar Bukhari, the Mossad, now joined by the “Jewish lobby,” are turning their attention to the Barcelona Football Club. According to Spanish sports columnist Xavier Bosch, Jews seeking to “control the world and its international institutions,” are pressuring club officials to end a $200 million sponsorship with a Qatari foundation, while the Mossad infiltrated the team.
Bosch’s original column (in Spanish) was published in Mundo Deportivo.
Barcelona FC
• At Egypt’s request, Gemany arrested one of Al Jazeera’s most senior journalists, Ahmed Mansour. Reuters got the scoop on the arrest.
Cairo’s criminal court sentenced Mansour, who has dual Egyptian and British citizenship, to 15 years in prison in absentia last year on the charge of torturing a lawyer in Tahrir Square in 2011.
Does Mansour’s arrest mean the Germans too are playing Calvinball in Cairo?
• Without getting involved the US gun control debate sparked by the Charleston church shooting, I can’t say I was thrilled the last time Israel was dragged into it (after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre). Now, we’re talking about a White House tweet. At least Israel’s not being lumped together with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Boko Haram . . .
POTUS
By the way, a website believed to have been created by the Charleston suspect, Dylann Roof, featured a rambling anti-Semitic, racist manifesto.
Commentary/Analysis
• Was today’s stabbing of a border policeman really a “lone wolf” attack? Ron Ben-Yishai explains why not. Here’s the context:
The main reason is the religious fervor among the Muslims on the holy month of Ramadan. It is not just a matter of the sermons they hear, or of their religious inclinations, but also the lengthy fast, the extreme changes to daily lives and maintaining their day-to-day routine while not sleeping at night – all of these create a situation in which the Muslim street all over the world, including in the Palestinian Authority, sensitivity and anger run high. This psychological analysis is important because it explains a significant amount of attacks that seemingly reveal no rational reason for the murderer to choose to risk his life and his surroundings.

The second reason is that an act of murder like the one on Friday near the Dolev settlement instantly brings about copycat attempts, mostly among those who were already feeling anger or religious fervor, or wanted to prove something to those around them.

The third reason is inspiration drawn from Islamist terror organizations, particularly Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Most of the attackers are linked in one way or another to one of the external circles affected by Hamas media and sermons from radical imams. Even though the attack was not directly sanctioned by one of the Islamist groups preaching for such actions, the guidance or inspiration came from them. In this manner, one could say that Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the shooting attack that killed Danny Gonen on Friday, prepared the ground for Sunday’s stabbing attack.
knife
• It’s not often that Mordechai Kedar and Yossi Beilin are on the same page, but they both make compelling arguments that Israel must take action to protect the Syrian Druze. But Professor Eyal Zisser urges caution.
• No, U.S. doesn’t have “absolute knowledge’ on Iran’s nukes
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend . . .
– Efraim Halevy: Hamas has become Israel’s frenemy
– Yoram Ettinger: The nature of the Abbas regime
– David Harris: “The Middle East Peace Process?” High Time for a New Name
– Daniel Gordis: It’s easy to be an anti-Semite
– Jonathan Tobin: US-Israel alliance won’t be fixed without honesty
– Michael Totten: The “snap back” delusion”
– Amos Harel: ‘Lone wolf’ terrorists remain biggest threat in West Bank, Jerusalem
– Einat Wilf: The BDS war of words
– Smadar Perry: Working to prevent another round in Gaza
– Tony Badran: Assad wants the Druze for cannon fodder

Featured image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com; Libyan Jews CC BY-SA Wikimedia Commons/Yad Vashem; atom CC BY-SA Deviant Art/deejaywill; Barcelona CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Marc Puig i Perez; knife CC BY flickr/Maarten Van Damme;

Admin Thu 18 Jun 2015, 6:40 pm

Rebels Surround Druze Village Near Israeli Border
Israel Daily News Stream6 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Khader, a Syrian Druze village near the Israeli border was surrounded by rebel forces. (Spellings vary if you Google the name.)
A smaller scale drama is taking place at a Druze enclave in the village of Khader, adjacent to the border with Israel. Opposition forces have now taken over two Syria army positions there, 1.5 kilometers from the village. The fighting is taking place in view of Druze on the Israeli side of the border, with growing concern for the fate of the Druze population in Khader . . .

Is the situation in Khader as critical as portrayed? Obviously, Israeli Druze are concerned about their relatives across the border, with the fighting getting ever closer. So far, it has not reached the village. It is possible that the rebels have taken Israel’s warnings not to enter it into account. The struggle of Israeli Druze leaders on behalf of Khader residents has become more open, with the army and police shutting off an area close to the border two days ago out of concern that a planned demonstration there would get out of hand.
However, an unidentified IDF officer told Israeli media that the situation in Khader was being blown out of proportion. More on the story at the Daily Telegraph.
2. Is Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fighting in Yemen?
3. Ex-ambassador Michael Oren’s forthcoming book on American-Israeli ties continues making waves as Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu refused a US request to disavow the book. The irony is that escalating the diplomatic spat will only confirm the thrust of Oren’s criticisms of the Obama administration.
If you’re following the story, Oren discussed Obama and Israel in a Times of Israel Q&A, alongside a separate list of 20 revelations from the book. Moshe Kahlon, the leader of the Kulanu Party, of which Oren is a member, distanced the party from the book.
Israel and the Palestinians
• A plan to drop Israeli products from three supermarkets in the Swedish city of Varberg was cancelled after the Israeli embassy in Sweden launched a social media campaign demanding fair trade and denouncing discrimination. The embassy feared the boycott would spread to the COOP chain’s 655 branches across Sweden:
This led the chain’s national management to reject the boycott and threaten that if the Varberg stores do not stop the boycott, they will no longer be a part of the chain, effectively putting an end to the boycott.
• Zuhair Mohamad Hassan Khalid al-Abassi, the mastermind of a 1982 terror attack in Paris was arrested in Jordan, but then released on bail. Don’t worry, Amman officials are reassuring everyone that the Palestinian won’t be allowed to leave the country while they decide whether to extradite Abassi.
Six people were killed and 22 wounded when two terrorists associated with Abu Nidal Organization threw a grenade into the Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant and then rushed inside opening fire. Abassi, who goes by the nom de guerre, Amjad Atta, is now 62.
• UNRWA chief: Gaza militants hid weapons in our facilities
• Questioning the legality of its PA-funding, Prime Minister Netanyahu seeks to shut down the Palestine 48 TV station hours before it goes on air. More at YNet.
Tzipi Livni
• Tzipi Livni dodged a war crimes arrest in London thanks to a legal loophole
However, Livni’s attendance at the recent women’s summit could have been considered a personal visit, leaving her vulnerable to arrest. To preempt the problem Livni, whose party leads Israel’s opposition, arranged to meet with senior UK government officials, enabling the Knesset speaker to approve her travel as an official visit, the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Wednesday.
• Israel accuses UN children’s rights envoy of “improper conduct” and bias against Israel. Reuters saw Ambassador Ron Prosor’s letter of complaint to Ban Ki-moon.
• Foreign Policy takes a closer look at Gaza’s rising support for ISIS and other radical Islamic groups. What do their threats mean for Hamas?
Worryingly, these new radical groups are finding support from within Hamas itself, among rank-and-file members who want to go back to war with Israel.
• Israeli academic figures told Knesset lawmakers they’re experiencing a latent boycott. More at the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz.
• AFP points out that the PA unity government which resigned yesterday will continue functioning with caretaker status until the next cabinet is formed. And there’s no telling how long that will take.
• The flotilla of boats heading hoping to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza is currently in Italy. The Jerusalem Post updates the latest on the IDF’s plans and Islamic Jihad threats should the ships be intercepted.
• Police detained 16 Jewish suspects, mostly minors, for questioning over a fire and vandalism at the Church of the Multiplication at Tagbha, on the Kinneret. Times of Israel coverage.
Around the World
atom• Resigned to the fact that a bad Iranian nuclear deal will be signed, Israeli officials are examining how to best protect the country’s interests after sanctions are lifted. Reuters looks at how Israel’s getting ready for the day after.
Rather than coordination in the shape of a regional missile defense agreement or something similar, Israeli experts say it is more likely that the Sunni states and Israel would quietly share intelligence, something the Israelis say they are already doing, and cooperate when necessary.

“Indirect secret cooperation vis-a-vis Iran is happening with these countries and there is the possibility to deepen it,” said Haim Tomer, a former head of international operations at Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
• With two weeks left to end negotiations, Iranian nuke talks are imperiled by disagreements on all main elements.
• I wonder what the editors of the Harvard International Review were thinking when they decided to publish an article on fighting violent extremism by the foreign minister of Iran. (Via Elder of Ziyon.)
• Sign of the times: The Wall St. Journal (click via Google News) describes executives welcoming potential customer Iran to the Paris air show.
• Melbourne Jewish institutions are on high alert following intelligence that a “radicalized” individual may carry out an attack.
• The Louvre denied discriminating against Israeli art students from Tel Aviv University, saying the museum’s reservation system is automated.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Yoav Limor: Quiet in the Golan, for now
– Dr. Ronen Yitzhak: What if the Druze turn to Hezbollah?
– Herb Keinon: Israel did what Obama asked
– Eitan Haber: UN investigators fighting wars on paper
– Danny Rubinstein: Abbas shows Hamas who’s boss
– Joseph Spoerl: Boycott goal is to dismantle Israel
– Skip Grinburg: BDS and Palestinian economic annihilation
– Emmanuel Navon: BDS hates Israel more than it loves human rights
– Maj.-Gen. (res.) Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel: Cyber warfare: A new, dangerous world
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Sander Spolspoel with additions by HonestReporting; Livnia via YouTube/Narb A; atom CC0 Pixabay;

Admin Thu 18 Jun 2015, 8:06 am

Abbas Dissolves Unity Government With Hamas
Israel Daily News Stream19 hours ago
IDNS-news-TV-videocamera-van-770x400
Today’s Top Stories
1. The PA government resigned and Mahmoud Abbas tasked Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah with forming a new cabinet. Abbas objects to the Hamas-Israel rapprochement, which the Times of Israel elaborates on.
Others, like Reuters bureau chief, Luke Baker, note they’ve seen this dance before.
Luke Baker
2. Israel’s Justice Ministry is reportedly getting ready to take legal action against BDS activists around the world:
The tactic came after a review by the international department of the Justice Ministry found that although boycott activists have appealed to many courts in Western countries for sanctions against Israel, they have never succeed in a obtaining a ruling in their favor, the Hebrew-language NRG news site reported on Wednesday.

Ministry officials believe that legal circumstances present the option of suing activists with civil and criminal law suits for damaging Israeli trade, for discrimination and racism, based on the laws in various countries, the report said.
3. John Kerry: The US won’t press Iran on giving a full account of its nuclear activities to date. “Absolute knowledge” is today’s buzzword because the Secretary of State claims the US already has it. See Reuters coverage. More on the issue at Foreign Policy.
4. BBC to Livni: “Would You Describe Your Parents as Terrorists?” In an interview full of leading questions, the Beeb tries baiting Tzipi Livni into calling her parents terrorists and Israel an apartheid state.
Israel and the Palestinians
• French diplomats continue pushing for a UN resolution creating a timeline for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. The Jerusalem Post updates the latest developments.
• Israel eased travel restrictions so Palestinians can visit the Temple Mount during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins on Thursday.
And how did Mahmoud Abbas respond to this goodwill gesture? Normalization’s a dirty word in Ramallah.
Khaled Abu Toameh

• IDF sees growing support for ISIS in Gaza. Details at Haaretz.
Mideast Matters
• Syrian rebels launched a fresh offensive against government-held positions in the Quneitra province, near the Israeli border. Flying shells sparked warning sirens in northern Israel.
• AFP: In northern Syria, rebels surrounded the Druze village of Hader.
• This is a really dumb article. As far as the Christian Science Monitor‘s concerned, jihadists massacring villagers is an image problem?
Christian Science Monitor
• Saudi journalist: I want to be Saudi ambassador to Israel.
• French immigration to Israel surges in summer 2015.
Commentary/Analysis
• Douglas Murray weighs in on artists leading the cultural boycott against Israel:
These people, step by step, want to make every expression of Israeli and Jewish cultural life subject to their idea of how a nation under constant threat of terrorist bombardment should behave. They denounce Israel as a militaristic society and then attempt to outlaw every non-militaristic cultural and artistic expression from that society.

It is the bigotry of our time.
• Tweet of the Day from Gidon Shaviv
Gidon Shaviv
• Unbelievable how the press corps is so holier than thou over the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s video poking fun at Gaza war reporters. The New York Times and Vox weighed in, among others. Big Media doth protest too much.
• While Israeli energy executives, government bureaucrats, and anti-trust investigators try to untangle the small print of offshore gas reserves and who profits, the Cypriot media is getting impatient . . .
• A few days after the New York Times published an op-ed criticizing Israel’s abortion policies, Yair Rosenberg clears the air.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– Ben-Dror Yemini: Evil spirit of BDS growing stronger in US
– New York Daily News (staff-ed): Obama vs. Israel
– Ofir Haivry: Moment of truth drawing near for Syria’s Druze – and for Israel
– Ben Judah: Why Israel welcomes chaos on its borders
– Dan Margalit: Israel’s Druze dilemma
– Avi Issacharoff: Druze have more to fear from Nusra than ISIS
– Michael Totten: Al Qaida’s bogus apology
– Wall St. Journal (staff-ed): Obama’s snap-back fantasy (click Google News)

Featured image: CC BY-SA flickr/Tom Woodward with additions by HonestReporting

Admin Tue 16 Jun 2015, 8:12 pm

Israel to Nusra Front: Don’t Mess With Druze
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel and Hamas reportedly discussing a 5-year truce. YNet writes:
The truce proposal is said to stipulate that Israel allow the construction of a floating sea port off the Gaza coast, to be subject to Israeli or international supervision.

In return, Hamas would agree to cease fire for five years, with the possibility of extending it.
2. Israel warns Nusra Front: Don’t mess with Druze. Jerusalem Post coverage.
3. Israeli papers were buzzing over ex-Ambassador Michael Oren’s accusations that the Obama administration deliberately damaged US-Israel ties. Oren, now a Knesset member whose memoirs are due to be released soon, disclosed his charges in a a Wall St. Journal op-ed (click via Google News).
News breaks fast. Get HonestReporting alerts by e-mail
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4. Israeli Foreign Ministry Video: Doth the Media Protest Too Much? Why is a video poking fun at the foreign press causing so much offense?
Open your eyes about Gaza 50 SECOND VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2MdayBMhb4
5. CNN Bias, Definitively Explained: Unfortunately, CNN’s still source-free.
6. Thinking of joining an HonestReporting mission to Israel? See what the Jewish Press had to say about our most recent one.
7. NPR Host Labels Jewish Senator “Dual Citizen”: Yarden Frankl discusses Diane Rehm’s flubbed interview, a bizarre New York Times headline, and the upcoming UN Human Rights Council report on the Gaza war. Click below to hear interview on Voice of Israel. 12.37 listen
Israel and the Palestinians
• The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is facing its “worst-ever cash crunch.”
It’s hardly surprising. The UNRWA cares exclusively for Palestinian refugees with a staff of over 30,000 personnel, while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees cares for all other refugees in the world with a staff of 9,300. The UNRWA also serves a bloated number of people because, unlike the High Commissioner, UNRWA’s unprecedented definition of refugees includes descendants of the original Palestinian refugees.
Meanwhile, Palestinian refugees protested against budget cuts outside the agency’s Beirut headquarters.
• Israeli lawmakers want to boost security at the Mt. of Olives cemetery. Arab lawmakers want Waqf involvement. Jerusalem Post coverage.
• The UN selected Norwegian diplomat Mogens Lykketoft as president of the General Assembly. He has a sour history with Israel.
• Orange CEO Stephane Richard’s taking legal action after receiving death threats.
• Good news: Asghar Bukhari, a founder and spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, found his missing shoe. In a rambling followup video, he says the shoe was stolen by an amazing Mossad fox that picked a lock on his front door, stole the shoe, kindly locked the door on its way out, eventually leaving the shoe in a neighbor’s garden.
Mideast Matters
• Addressing the Druze implications for Israel, James Dorsey raises a notable piece of info I wasn’t aware of.
Mitigating in favour of intervention is not just the Israeli government’s need to cater to a key domestic community but also a desire to counter a Syrian government proposal to arm the Druze in exchange for a pledge that those weapons would not be used against government forces. Syrian Druze acceptance of the government’s offer would, in Israeli and Saudi eyes, effectively expand Iranian influence.
• The Daily Telegraph visited Majdal Shams to take the pulse of the Israeli Druze community.
• Israel Helped Obama Skirt ‘Red Line’ on Syria
• An Egyptian court sentenced ex-president Mohammed Morsi to life in prison for spying for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. The BBC explains why some headlines say it was a 25-year sentence.
In Egypt, a life sentence is 25 years in jail.
Around the World
• Holland indefinitely postponed the release of a government survey submitting a higher preponderance of anti-Semitism among Muslim youths than among Christian youths. Is it too politically incorrect for Amsterdam?
De Telegraaf nonetheless reviewed a copy of the synopsis, which said that 12 percent of Muslim respondents expressed a “not positive” view of Dutch Jews compared to 2 percent among Christian respondents.

Asked by De Telegraaf why the report has not been released, a ministry spokesman said the ministry needs “clarification, for example, on how to explain some results.” The ministry declined to elaborate, De Telegraaf reported.
• Maybe it’s just me: Is the auto da fe making a comeback, or is this just an oddly worded Jerusalem Post headline?
JPost
Commentary/Analysis
• Everybody’s issuing reports on the Gaza war, or about to, so it’s understandable if your head’s spinning a little. But how much do they matter? Jonathan Tobin summed up my own head space pretty good:
The battle over the reports provides a microcosm of the entire conflict precisely because the facts are irrelevant to the debate. It doesn’t matter how much care the IDF takes to avoid hurting noncombatants. If, like the HRC and other Israel-haters, you don’t think the Jewish state has a right to exist or to defend itself, everything it does is illegitimate. By the same token, it doesn’t matter how culpable Hamas is, their crimes are always going to be rationalized or even justified by those determined to smear Israel.
• It’s bad enough that Sudan’s president dodged arrest in South Africa to attend an African Union summit in Johannesburg. But what to make of Palestinian support for Omar Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for Darfur genocide? Eugene Kontorovich weighs in:
The Palestinian Authority is not alone in this – the entire Arab League backs Bashir against the ICC. But what makes the PA’s position on Bashir even more outrageous is that they have actually purported to join the ICC, and seek to invoke its jurisdiction against Israeli officials. The only other Arab League members to join the ICC are Comoros, Djibouti, and Jordan, which has distanced itself from the Bashir policy, unlike the PA.

Thus even as the Palestinians got the ICC to bend its rules about statehood to join, they were advocating the defiance of the Court’s writ in the single most important and grave kind of case, genocide cases initiated by the Security Council. In short, the Palestinians seek to exempt genocidaires from the Court’s jurisdiction while pushing for it to prosecute Israelis for allowing Jews to live in Jerusalem. The PA is involved in the trivialization and corruption of the Court from both ends.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Thomas Elias: Define anti-Semitism or enable it
– Michael Curtis: UNRWA in Gaza is counterproductive
– Dror Eydar: BDS: It’s not about “the occupation”
– New York Post: Israel’s preemptive strike at a United Nations smear (staff-ed)
– Julien Bauer: Western anti-Semitism is very well alive
–
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Dave with additions by HonestReporting; Bashir via YouTube/NTV Kenya;

Admin Tue 16 Jun 2015, 12:01 am

Israel to Create Buffer Zone for Syrian Druze?
Israel Daily News Stream8 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Today’s main story was the release of Israel’s report on Operation Protective Edge and upcoming release of the UN Human Rights Council’s report (any day now). While Bloomberg News coverage suffices, one Israeli lawmaker who accompanied Israelis to testify to the Schabas commission in Geneva told Israel media he was stunned by the questions investigators posed.
“It is truly ignorance,” Jelin said. “I felt that they were asking questions that were utterly disconnected from reality. It shows the enormous gap that exists between what they know and think and the truth.”
Meanwhile, William Schabas discussed the upcoming UN report with Israel’s Channel 2.
Last, but not least, see HonestReporting’s Three Media Angles to Beware Ahead of the Schabas Report’s Release. Here’s what you need to know.
2. Does Israel plan to create a buffer zone to protect Syrian Druze? That’s what i24 News reports, citing a YNet story (that isn’t online) which in turn cited Israel’s Walla News (in Hebrew).
A diplomatic source told Walla that “there is no intention to ignore the possibility of a massacre against the Druze.” Several weeks ago a senior Israeli military official, briefing reporters, also said “Israel would not stand idle if it sees a massacre.”
Last week, at least 20 Druze were massacred in the northwest Syrian town of Qalb Lawzah by the Al Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front. In an unusual step, the Nusra Front apologized, which has Yossi Melman‘s antennae twitching.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Druze community raised $2.6 million for their Syrian brethren to buy arms and other necessities.
3. Haaretz: French officials are investigating the Louvre Museum for illegally discriminating against a group of Israeli art history students from Tel Aviv University who sought to arrange a tour of the Paris museum.
After being turned down, Hendler attempted to make arrangements for a visit on the same dates and times, using names of fictitious educational institutions from Italy and Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf – and was told that space was available.
Louvre
The Louvre
Israel and the Palestinians
• New York Times coverage of Israel’s Gaza report was a little prickly. Despite international demands that Israel conduct a thorough and transparent investigation, Jodi Rudoren put it in the context of a propaganda exercise:
Mr. Netanyahu suggested instead that people read the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s 280-page study of the operation, or one produced over the weekend by five former generals from other countries. They are among a dozen in-depth reviews by human rights organizations, pro-Israel advocacy groups and Israel’s military promoted in recent months as an intense propaganda war continues long after the last bombs were dropped.
• Israel refuses entry to the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Makarim Wibisono. He’s not attached to the UN Human Rights Council, rather, Wibisono reports directly to the UN General Assembly, and he’s working on his own report on Israeli human rights violations in the Palestinian areas. Just to be clear on why Israel’s not cooperating, the Jerusalem Post adds:
Israel remains the only country for which a special investigator is permanently assigned.
• US trade bills seek to halt boycotts of Israel. YNet updates the latest from Capitol Hill.
• NPR takes a nice look at an Israeli company opening a desalination plant in San Diego.
Around the World
• Iranian hackers continue their ongoing attacks on Israeli targets. YNet picked up on the findings of ClearSky, an Israeli cyber security firm.
• Iran brought home from Syria the body of Hadi Kajbaf, a major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the highest ranking Iranian killed there. Reuters reports he was killed in April by rebels who retrieved his body; it’s not clear Tehran got it back.
Manuel Valls
Prime Minister Manuel Valls
• AFP: French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called on Islamic leaders to reject anti-Semitism posing as anti-Zionism.
“We must say all of this is not Islam,” said Valls. “The hate speech, anti-Semitism that hides behind anti-Zionism and hate for Israel… the self-proclaimed imams in our neighborhoods and our prisons who are promoting violence and terrorism.”
• French comedian Dieudonne loses appeal on parody of Holocaust survivor’s song, fined $146,000.
Commentary/Analysis
• Could India act as go-between for Israel and the Arab world? New Delhi-based journalist Aditi Bhaduri makes the case.
• Here’s what else I’m reading today:
– David Harris: 10 ways Israel is treated unfairly
– Dror Eydar: Without the Jews, there is no Jerusalem
– Seth Lipsky: Refusing to acknowledge that Jerusalem is in Israel has drained Obama of power
– Reuven Berko: What goes around comes around
– Avner Golov: Preventing Iran’s nuclear checkmate
– Eyal Zisser: The Druze’s growing predicament

Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA flicrk/Ed Yourdon with additions by HonestReporting; Louvre CC BY-NC flickr/Mariano Mantel; Valls CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Parti socialiste;

Admin Sun 14 Jun 2015, 9:01 pm

Al Jazeera America Sued By Another Ex-Employee Over Bias
Israel Daily News Stream6 hours ago
Today’s Top Stories
1. Israel released its own report on Operation Protective Edge, which, as the Jerusalem Post notes, is “intended to preempt the UN Human Right’s Council commission report on the Gaza operation that is expected to be released this week.” The government’s full report is online.
The UN report was originally scheduled to be presented to the UNHRC in March. This was delayed by the resignation of the inquiry chairman, Judge William Schabas, who had a record of anti-Israel statements. His fingerprints will be all over the final UNHRC report. (Judge Mary McGowan Davis replaced Schabas as the commission’s head.)

2. Another ex-al-Jazeera America journalist sued the station over its anti-Israel and anti-women bias. Shannon High-Bassalik was fired after heading AJAM’s documentary unit for three years. According to AP:
“As ratings failed to live up to the expectations of management, Al Jazeera openly decided to abandon all pretense of neutrality in favor of putting the Arabic viewpoint front and center, openly demanding that programs be aired that criticized countries such as America, Israel and Egypt,” High-Bassalik’s lawsuit stated.

She said she was told that if abandonment of journalistic integrity led people to regard them as terrorists, “that was an acceptable risk for the company to take.”
AJAM was already rocked by former-employee Matt Luke‘s $15 million lawsuit, saying higher-ups were anti-Semitic, sexist, and anti-American. That led to the resignations of CEO Ehab Al Shihabi, Marcy McGinnis, and two other executives.

3. Israeli Druze demonstrated for government action to protect their Syrian brethren from a “Druze Holocaust.” Government officials ruled out IDF intervention but appealed to the US to increase its aid to the Syrian Druze.
Israel is prepared to offer humanitarian aid to the residents of Khadr, near the Israeli border. However, after consultations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and other senior security officials, intervention to assist the Druze in the Jabal al-Druze region, deep in Syrian territory, was ruled out as it would be perceived as direct intervention in the Syrian civil war and could entangle Israel in the fighting there..
Israel and the Palestinians
• Expect tensions between Israel and the US to rise a little over the upcoming release of Ambassador Michael Oren’s memoir. Oren, a former historian, now a Knesset member, wrote an insider’s account of the fraying Jerusalem-Washington ties. Oren discussed the book with New York Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt.
The book’s due out next week, just a few days before (coincidentally or not) the June 3o deadline for the Iranian nuclear talks, so this may not be comfortable reading for some American Jews.
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu as Ambassador Michael Oren walks behind.
• Careful, Associated Press, or you’re going to be accused of “pinkwashing.” Big Media picked up on gay rights in Israel after more than 100,000 people turned up for Tel Aviv’s gay pride parade.
Israel has emerged as one of the world’s most gay-friendly travel destinations in recent years, in sharp contrast to the rest of the Middle East where gay culture is not tolerated and gays are persecuted and even killed.

Across the rest of the Mideast, gay and lesbian relationships are mostly taboo. The pervasiveness of religion in everyday life, along with strict cultural norms, plays a major factor in that. Same-sex relations are punishable by death in Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.
See also Washington Post coverage.
• With the UN Human Rights Council’s report on the Gaza war due this week, UN Watch obtained the key preliminary findings of high-level military experts. It praised IDF restraint, and accused Hamas of committing war crimes.
• The IDF closed its probe of an airstrike that killed four Palestinian children playing soccer on a Gaza beach during Operation Protective Edge. The incident was ruled a case of mistaken identity as the air force failed to identify them as children who were in an area “utilized exclusively by militants.” Reuters overage.
• Reuters: A Madrid court suspended its investigation into the Mavi Marmara affair, but “the probe could potentially be re-opened if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ever visits Spain.” The investigation is based on Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction, which displeased lawmakers are trying to rein in.
• Asghar Bukhari, a founder and spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, had an epic meltdown on social media, starting when he claimed on Facebook that the Mossad stole his shoe.(!?) After taking ridicule online (see the Twitter hashtag, #MossadStoleMyShoe), Bukhari posted an impassioned 15-minute rant on YouTube, then continued his meltdown on Twitter with tweets like this. The story was picked up by a number of British and Israeli papers and made for some funny tweets.
The BDS Battle
• What’s known as “corporate social responsibility” is good for business, but what happens when it collides with politics, especially BDS? As the Jerusalem Post points out:
In Europe, some companies and investors have taken the view that BDS is an act of social responsibility.
• Haaretz: Norwegian insurance giant excludes two multinational building material companies from its investment portfolio because of their operations in the West Bank.
The decision is relatively unusual for divesting from companies operating in the West Bank because it constitutes a tertiary boycott – not on acquiring a product made in the West Bank or from an Israeli company producing it but rather a multinational company involved in a financial relationship with an Israeli company operating over the Green Line.
• During an international gathering of religious leaders, Israel’s chief Sephardi rabbi called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to help fight against boycotts. YNet coverage.
• Thumbs up to the Christian Science Monitor‘s Christa Case Bryant for a look at BDS that notes the movement’s opposition to anything smacking of normalized ties with Israel — business, athletic, or cultural programs, or even dialogue. Leslie Ordeman, a press attache at the US consulate in Jerusalem told the Monitor:
“However, the anti-normalization movement feels almost Orwellian,” he says. “It effectively cuts off any type of interaction between average Palestinians and average Israelis, which makes it very easy for each side to dehumanize the other…. There is no room to engage with anyone who might actually need to be convinced.”
• Breaking the Silence comes under fire amid boycott threat, tsk.
• Israel and Canada expect to iron out the details of a free-trade agreement this summer. The National Post reports it will expand on an already-existing free-trade pact signed in 1997.
Around the World
• As expected, Spain‘s parliament passed a “law of return” for the descendants of Jews expelled during the Inquisition.
• Old tweets have a way of catching up with government officials, especially when they’re tasteles and anti-Semitic. The Spanish Report is calling for two Madrid city council members to be dismissed over offensive tweets posted years before they were elected. It appears that Guillermo Zapata shut down his Twitter account; Pablo Soto hasn’t tweeted anything since August.
• Anti-Semitic incidents reach an all-time high in Canada.
• Hungarian ex-mayor fired over anti-Semitic tirade
Commentary/Analysis
• Khaled Abu Toameh ties BDS to Hamas.
Hamas views these BDS activities as an extension of the campaign to destroy Israel that the Islamist movement has been waging since its founding in 1988. While Hamas has been unable to send its representatives to speak to students and professors at the university campuses, BDS supporters seem to be doing the job on its behalf.

The U.S. universities that allow BDS activists to disseminate their hate against Israel are unaware that these people are serving as Hamas’s ambassadors.
• Here’s what else I’m reading this weekend:
– David Bernstein: Why did Diane Rehm fall for an anti-Semitic hoax?
– Adrian Hilton: The evil of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel
– Nadav Shragai: Is the UN legitimizing a Hamas affiliate?
– Norman Bailey: Potential Israeli dilemmas: one Saudi, one Chinese
– Michael Totten: The Saudis team up with Israel
– Soeren Kern: Germany: Muslims Exempt from School Trips to Holocaust Sites?
– New York Times (staff-ed): Accounting for the Benefits of Mideast Peace
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Zuhair A. Al-Traifi with additions by HonestReporting; Oren via Facebook/Israel in the USA; Canada via Pixabay/Kurious;

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